OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — While Americans celebrated the Fourth of July holiday, one local veteran took a moment to reflect on his service to the country and all those who have fought to protect the path toward freedom that began back on the first Independence Day in 1776.
Tom Stevens was an Air Force gunner during the Korean War.
He enlisted in 1951, just after graduating high school. From there, he went to Lackland Air Force base near San Antonio, Texas.
He began training to operate the gun turrets in the tail compartment of a Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Stationed on Okinawa, he and his crew flew bombing missions over North Korea.
"I kind of looked at it as a new adventure, a new chapter in my life," Stevens said. "And although there was a great danger of being killed or wounded, that really didn't play much of a part in my thinking at all."
Stevens had an aerial view of the fight to stop communism from spreading in Korea. While he fought from the air, he praised those who faced the brunt of the violence on the ground.
"The guys on the ground really went through a lot of punishment," Stevens said. "Whereas my assignment was to fly. As part of a bomber crew out of Okinawa, where I lived in a barracks, I had a cot and blankets and a mattress and that sort of thing that I had to come back to."
But his missions were not without risk. With the help of China and Russia, the North Koreans began using MiG-15 fighter jets.
On Oct. 23, 1951, those jets took down six American aircrafts in one attack, the highest percentage of U.S. bombers ever lost in a single mission.
After that, the U.S. switched to mainly nighttime missions. However, Stevens and his crew still had to dodge bullets shot by enemy forces from the ground.
"As soon as we released our bombs, we [took] immediate evasive action," Stevens said. "We took a sharp turn, generally to the left and lost about 5,000 feet of altitude as quickly as we could."
Stevens says he believes the efforts of the fighters in the air and on the ground accomplished a worthy goal.
"The result of it was that South Korea is a democracy," he said. "I think that the efforts on the part of the United Nations forces resulted in South Korea being free today."
For his efforts, Stevens received nearly half a dozen medals, including the Ambassador for Peace medal, awarded by the Koreans to Korean War veterans.
After the war, Stevens spent two more years in the Air Force, training on the B-50 bomber and carrying the atomic bomb in case of a war with Russia.
He was honorably discharged in 1955, then returned home to Springfield, Missouri. He attended college at Drury University, where he met his wife, Barbara.
The couple went on to have four kids; two sets of twins, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. For 33 years, Stevens worked as a Management Trainer for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, until his retirement.
Though he only spent four years in the Air Force, Stevens has made it his lifelong mission to honor those who served.
He helped spearhead the construction on the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Overland Park. It opened in 2006.
Then in 2016, he was elected president of the National Korean War Veterans Association (KWVA).
"The goal was to do what we could do as an organization to further the alliance between the United States and South Korea," Stevens said.
That job involved several trips to Washington, D.C., including a meeting at the White House with former President Barack Obama.
On another occasion, he traveled to the Capitol, to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, hosted by then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Stevens recalled a conversation he had with the vice president: "I happen to know that his father was a Korean War veteran. So I mentioned that to him. And his son is also a marine pilot, so we talked a little bit about those things."
After a ceremony at the Korean War Memorial, Stevens called out to Pence as he was leaving.
"I yelled, I said, 'Vice President Pence!' And the whole group stopped, and he turned around, and I went up to him and said, 'It was a pleasure meeting you. I will tell my grandchildren about this,'" Stevens said recalling the conversation with Pence. "And he said, 'No, I'll tell my grandchildren about this.'"
After that encounter, someone from the vice president's team walked up and gave Stevens the Vice Presidential commemorative coin.
On another Veterans Day, Stevens was attending a ceremony in Washington, D.C., and he met with Vice President Pence and then-Defense Secretary James Mattis.
At one point, Stevens, then 85 years old, mentioned that he had been standing for a while. Mattis went to get him a chair, but Stevens said he didn't want to be the only one sitting.
Mattis asked Stevens if he could still give him a direct order, despite Stevens no longer being an active duty airmen. When Stevens said "yes," Mattis ordered him to sit.
Stevens laughed as he told the story, calling it one of his favorite memories from his time as president of the KWVA.
After Mattis resigned as defense secretary, Stevens sent him a letter thanking him for his service. Mattis sent back a personalized postcard, and at the end of the note, Mattis wrote "You deserve that chair."
Now, Stevens' home is filled with memories and relics of those years. As the country celebrates the Fourth of July, Stevens urges everyone to remember what it stands for.
"It's more than just barbecues and that sort of thing," he said. "A lot of people give their lives for our independence. I think that Fourth of July is an important holiday because of the freedoms that we have, and the great country in which we live. We are really lucky."
