BY ANDY TAYLOR
This Is My Montgomery County

CHERRYVALE — For the past two weeks, Alvin Wood of Cherryvale has found himself back in the ranks of the U.S. Air Force.

And, he’s got the dog tags to prove it.

That’s Alvin W. Wood, AF 17342093 — reporting for duty!

But, to know why Wood, a resident of the Cherryvale Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, proudly sports his dogs tags around his neck, you’ve got to know how they got there — again.

Here’s the amazing tale . . .

Some eight months ago, Melinda Cannon, a member of the nursing center’s housekeeping department, was helping her boyfriend clean out a file cabinet that the boyfriend’s stepmother had purchased at a real estate auction.

The contents inside that metal file cabinet were insignificant; it was the file cabinet itself that the family was needing for use. The family cannot even recall which auction from where the file cabinet was bought.

So, some miscellaneous papers found at the bottom of the file cabinet drawers were thrown away, until Melinda’s boyfriend found a pair of military dog tags sitting in the bottom of the drawer.

Rather than throw the metal dog tags in the trash can, Melinda’s boyfriend thought that her kids might enjoy playing with them.

So, the dog tags found a new home in a toy box — amid a myriad of other kiddie toys.

Two weeks ago, while Melinda was picking up the toys and placing them in the toy box, she came across that old pair of dog tags that she thought had long been discarded or found sanctuary at the bottom of the toy bin. She had never paid any attention to them until she read the name stamped on the aging metal: “Wood, Alvin W.”

“I immediately told my boyfriend, ‘Hey, I think I know this guy’,” she said, recalling the conversation with her boyfriend. “He’s a new resident at the care center.”

Last Tuesday, Dec. 9, Cannon surprised Wood with the presentation of his long-lost dog tags. And, the longtime Cherryvale resident was almost moved to tears at the sight of his military identity tags dangling from a metal chain.

“My reaction was, ‘Where in the heck did you find those things?” said Wood. “I haven’t seen them for more than 50 years.”

Cannon explained how her boyfriend’s stepmother bought a file cabinet at an auction and how her kids had used them as a toy for several months.

Cannon thought it was fitting that the dog tags be returned to their rightful owner.

“I thought he deserved to have them back,” she said.

As if finding those old dog tags amid the unimportant clutter of auction fodder wasn’t a miracle enough, here’s another unique angle to this story . . .

Wood says he believes those dog tags may have made a long voyage that has come full circle to Cherryvale.

“To the best of my memory, I put those dog tags away after I left the Air Force and bought a newspaper in Orion, Illinois,” he said. “That was the last time I saw those dog tags. So, it could be that those dog tags fell in a file cabinet, and the file cabinet went from Illinois to Cherryvale.”

Wood says he forgot about those dog tags after he went into the newspaper business. He hadn’t thought about them until Cannon, the nursing center employee, gave them to him last week.

After attending schools in Cherryvale and being trained as a printer’s devil at the Cherryvale Daily Republican newspaper, Wood joined the U.S. Air Force in the years following World War II. He was bound for the Korean Conflict before a strange infection in his hand caused him several days of hospitalization in New York.

“I was in the hospital for about three or four days . . . during which time my orders got changed,” he said. “I was ready to go to Korea but ended up in Europe.”

Wood served as a service assistant to a U.S. Air Force chaplain during his four years of military service. Wood served in Germany, France and Luxembourg.

“I drove the chaplain everywhere, wrote all of his letters and said ‘Yes, sir’,” Wood said, laughingly.
Some 50 years later, Wood said he was proud of his years in the military, and getting his dog tags back has brought back a flood of memories of his brief contribution to Uncle Sam.

“I’ve got a lot of good memories of my years in the U.S. Air Force,” he said. “And, I’m glad to have the dog tags back. I can still tell you my serial number without looking at my tags: AF 17342093 . . . yes, sir!”

• Born and raised in Montgomery County, Andy Taylor is a fifth-generation newspaper editor who keeps the pulse of Montgomery County. If you have a story idea about a unique person or event in Montgomery County, let Taylor know by calling (620) 331-9178, or send an e-mail to chronicle@taylornews.org.