Nearly sixty-four years after Master Sgt. Donald “Red” Moran was reported missing in action during the Korean War, the Boulder Creek native and Silver Star winner will at last be honored with a memorial at the Felton Cemetery.
According to reports, the 21-year-old Moran — serving in the 38th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division — was declared missing in action on Nov. 29, 1950 during combat near Kunu-ri, North Korea.
His body was never found, and he was presumed dead on Dec. 31, 1953.
Frank Winkler, a member of the Felton Cemetery’s board of directors, was in fifth grade when Moran was an upperclassman at the former San Lorenzo Junior-Senior High School in Boulder Creek.
He said that he became aware of Moran’s story when he happened to see a dedication to the young soldier in his wife’s old yearbook.
Intrigued, Winkler said that he began to ask around about Moran, to see if anyone remembered him.
“I talked to a couple of locals,” he said. “I didn’t know him, but they did.”
As memories were jogged, he said, Moran’s story began to come together.
He was an athlete who was known for jumping from the balcony in the school’s gym, doing a double flip, and landing on his feet.
He was a young husband, shipped out to Korea less than a month after his wedding day.
He was an outstanding soldier, rising in rank from private to master sergeant in barely a year’s time.
He was awarded the Silver Star for his leadership and valor, as well as the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster.
According to stories from Moran’s friends and classmates, Winkler said, after Moran was declared dead, his wife and parents all went their separate ways, leaving the San Lorenzo Valley behind. No known relatives of Moran remain.
“(A soldier’s death) will destroy a family,” Winkler said.
While Moran’s name is recognized at the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, there is no marker for the local war hero in his home community.
“I said; ‘He must be in the Boulder Creek cemetery,’” Winkler said, adding that he’d checked with the International Order Odd Fellows. “He’s not. He’s not in Boulder Creek, he’s not in Felton.”
Winkler decided that something needed to change, and made it his mission to provide Moran with the memorial marker he’d never received.
Winkler presented Moran’s case to his fellow directors of the Felton Cemetery, and they agreed to provide a plot for a memorial near the marker honoring Sgt. Richard R. Mancebo, who served in the same unit as Moran, and went missing in action himself on May 18, 1951.
“These guys were in the same unit, same time, and they didn’t come back,” he said. “(Moran’s) body is still in Korea. He and Mancebo, they’re not here.”
On Tuesday, Nov. 11, when the Blue Star Mothers of America were at the Felton Cemetery erecting American flags in honor of Veterans’ Day, they also over a temporary marker that Winkler made himself to honor Moran, until a permanent one can be secured.
“I’m doing this because I think it should be done,” Winkler said. “If there’s a hero, I think he probably is.”
