PHOTO BY JEFF NELSON

Columbia Junior High ninth-grader Molly Stenerson (left) wrote a moving tribute poem to her Grandpa Ed, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War (pictured here standing next to her). The young writer read her poem to her schoolmates at a Veteran’s Day assembly Nov. 12 with her mom, dad, grandmother Anne Stenerson (all in background) and proud grandfather there to see her.

Student honors grandfather - s bravery

By Matt Nagle

In 1967, Edgar Stenerson was on the front lines of the Vietnam War. He had already been in the Air Force for 20 years and, just like his comrades, he accepted his orders to fight without question. However, there was division in the ranks not created by the soldiers, but by the leadership within the U. S. military that continued to treat black soldiers like second-class citizens even though the military had been officially desegregated in 1954.

One year into his deployment, shortly after the massive communist Tet Offensive against allied forces, Sternerson was wounded when a bomb struck his platoon’s encampment. He shed no blood, he said, but rather suffered significant internal injuries to his back. Years later the injuries caused Stenerson to have his leg amputated. He would ultimately receive a Bronze Star for devotion to duty and for actions above and beyond the call of duty.

Other soldiers were injured in the attack as well, including an African American soldier who did shed blood as Stenerson tells it, but Stenerson was offered a purple heart and his African American comrade was not. Stenerson refused his purple heart on principal – a black soldier’s blood spilled in battle deserved to be honored just as a white soldier’s would have been. Stenerson said his superiors tried to make him change his mind, but the veteran remained steadfast.

“I told them what I believed in and the circumstances,” Stenerson said from his home at Patriot’s Landing retirement community in DuPont he shares with his wife, Anne. “They tried to convince me that I should take it but I didn’t earn it. I didn’t deserve it. The reason I turned it down was because a purple heart is meant for people who shed blood for their country. I didn’t have a scratch. I didn’t have an open wound.”

Stenerson’s granddaughter, Molly Stenerson, a ninth-grader at Columbia Junior High, never forgot this story that her “Grandpa Ed” had once told her and she decided to honor his bravery in a poem she wrote called “Honor.” The young writer read her poem to all her classmates during at a Veteran’s Day assembly at the high school Nov. 11 with her Grandpa Ed, grandmother Anne, and her mom and dad there to see her.

“I thought it was fantastic,” Edgar Stenerson said. “I can’t say enough to praise her. She’s just awesome.”

“We got goose bumps,” said her mom, Lauren Stenerson. “Ed was flabbergasted. At 14 my daughter gets how important grandparents are.”

Laura Stenerson said she credits Molly’s mature sense of fairness to the family’s open-minded household. “We talk all the time about right and wrong. When she heard the story she was indignant. She thought that was so awesome of her grandfather for doing that.”

“I’m very proud of him,” Molly Stenerson said. To refuse an African American soldier an honor offered to a Caucasian soldier “was very inappropriate and disrespectful. I’m glad my grandpa made his opinion clear about that, that it should be fair.”

Molly Stenerson, a student in honors English who also enjoys math and science, said she loves writing and plans to continue crafting her talents in this while

studying to become a veterinarian. “I write a lot of poetry,” she said. She is also a songwriter and musician; she plays the piano, taught herself the guitar and plays baritone saxophone in her school band in symphonic and jazz bands.

Molly Stenerson said she thinks it’s noteworthy that her grandfather isn’t bitter that he lost his leg and that he doesn’t carry resentments over everything he went through in fighting for freedoms overseas and at home. “He’s not bitter about that at all,” she said. “He just keeps a happy face on. He’s got a big heart.”

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