Recognizing Area Medal of Honor Winners

County Council will be working on ideas to honor the Medal of Honor winners who came from Pickens County.

“Pickens County has four Medal of Honor winners,” said County Councilman Trey Whitehurst Monday night.

Pickens County has more Medal of Honor recipients per capita than any other county in the nation.

The Pickens County Medal of Honor winners are Charles Barker, William McWhorter, Furman Smith and Donnie Howe.

Private First Class William McWhorter, of Liberty, was killed in action on December 5, 1944 while in the battle of Leyte in the Philippines.

When a makeshift grenade was thrown at McWhorter and a fellow soldier, McWhorter grabbed it and covered it with his body. He was killed instantly when it detonated, saving the other soldier's life.

Private Furman Smith was serving in the Army in Italy during World War II. Smith refused to leave wounded men behind after being ambushed by German forces on May 31, 1944. He hid the wounded and fought a force of 80 by himself until he was killed.

Private First Class Charles Barker served in the Army in Korea. Instructed to engage the enemy while his platoon moved to another position during the battle of Porkchop Hill, he was last seen fighting hand-to-hand on June 4, 1953.

Lance Corporal James Donnie Howe came under fire with two of his fellow Marines on a beach in Vietnam on May 6, 1970. When a grenade landed among them, Howe threw himself on it and was killed when it went off.

“We have right now two roads or facilities named after those recipients,” Whitehurst said.

He made a motion to send to committee a plan to review “finding something else to recognize these war heroes.”

Council chairman Neil Smith said county staff had already begun gathering information.

“We determined that at least two of the four, Donny Howe and Furman Smith, have something named after them but we have not been able to verify anything on the other two,” he said.

The county has rules concerning naming roads and facilities, but Smith said there would be no problem there.

“Anybody who's received the Congressional Medal of Honor is definitely going to qualify under our rules,” Smith said. “I don't even have to look at them.”

Note: the biographical information on the four Pickens County Medal of Honor winners was drawn from an essay written by Pickens High School student Renee Chastain in 2010. Chastain's essay, “Thirty Miles, Four Men, Three Traits: One Medal,” won the 2010 Congressional Medal of Honor Society's “Beyond Valor” essay. Read her full essay here.