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Harford County veteran honored for service, fund-raising at Korean War Memorial’s Wall of Remembrance

Baltimore Sun - 8/5/2022

Sam Fielder, a Korean War veteran who was integral to Harford County becoming the first county in the country to donate funding for the the Korean War Veterans Memorial’s new Wall of Remembrance, was honored during the wall’s dedication July 27 in Washington.

Fielder, who died last November at age 88, helped raise a total of $12,300 toward the wall – around $400 for each of the 30 Harford County residents who fought in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953.

Harford County Executive Barry Glassman attended the ceremony along with Fielder’s widow, Doris.

“It was a good day – sad in a way – but it was still a good day,” Glassman said. “It made you thankful.”

Fielder enlisted in the Marine Corps in September 1951 to fight in the war, shortly after graduating from Bel Air High School the previous June, according to Doris Fielder.

“It was just a very hard-fought war,” she said.

The Fielders were married for almost 26 years and lived in Jarrettsville.

Fiedler was not the first Marine in his family. His father was a Marine in World War I and his brother in World War II.

He was also known for his poetry, often about the Korean War; he was even recognized as an honorary poet laureate for Harford County in 2017. He read poems such as “Our Flag,” at numerous local events. Glassman recalled his recital of the poem at a 9/11 remembrance event in Fielder’s later years.

“It just really brings home that sacrifice of those usually young Americans that are barely 18 or 19 years old and shipped off to a [foreign] country and fighting for people they didn’t know,” Glassman said. “It’s good to get thanks, and to recognize them, particularly as time goes by, and their numbers are becoming fewer and fewer.”

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