POW Camp Survivor & Alumnus Thanks ROTC with Gift Edwin Glover can tell you exactly where he was on July 10, 1943 – getting off a boat at Litah Beach, France.  He can tell you how many days he carried his nine pound M-1 rifle – 50.  He can tell you the day he was wounded in battle and captured by German soldiers – Sept. 5, 1944.  And, he can tell you the day he was freed – May 15, 1945.   For Glover, each day he served the United States during World War II was an honorable day – a day worth remembering. The Stillwater native grew up in Oklahoma during the Depression, which forced his family to move around in search of food and work.  But the family eventually returned to Stillwater where Glover graduated high school in 1940.

Edwin Glover

Glover wanted to enroll at Oklahoma A&M College, but his father said he could not afford to finance his education.

“I reconciled myself to be a laboring man,” Glover says.

However, a phone call from a family friend, George Givens, the chief engineer for the power plant at Oklahoma A&M, would change that thought.   

“George offered me a job paying 20 cents an hour,” he says. “It turned out to be a God send and allowed me to go to school.”

In the days Glover attended OAMC it was compulsory to enroll in the ROTC program, and he was happy to do it.

“It gave me another layer on my leadership abilities,” Glover says.  “I was very pleased with how I could adapt myself to the principles of leadership through the program.”

In April 1943, Glover put his leadership skills to the test as he was called to active duty in World War II and sent to Ft. Benning in Georgia where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
 
Glover led his platoon on the front line at St. Loa in Northern France, but on Sept. 5, 1944, he was wounded in the leg and captured.  For the next seven months and 11 days, Glover was held captive in a German POW camp. 

But even while in the POW camp, Glover says he never thought he would not make it home.

“You never think of things like that,” he says.  “You have to keep your eyes and brain focused on what you’re doing.”

After being freed by field marshal Bernard Montgomery and spared his leg by a French orthopedic surgeon, despite German attempts to amputate it, Glover spent another 18 months at Borden General Hospital in Chickasha, Okla.

Once recovered, he re-enrolled at OAMC, began working for the college and graduated with a business degree in 1947.  Glover maintained employment at the university and eventually started the Department of Internal Audits, which now employs about 20 people.

Today, he is starting the Edwin and Mary Glover Endowment in memory of his wife, which will provide financial support for the OSU ROTC program. 

“I think the ROTC program is a movement that should have been retained as compulsory and should be re-established,” he says. “The ROTC is one of the very frugal ways of training good leaders. It’s a wonderful organization that promotes patriotism, love of country and love of their institution. That’s why I am pleased to help ROTC financially.”

Glover’s $13,000 gift provides the program with unrestricted funds that can be used for recruitment, training and development of future leaders in the U.S. Army.  And, it is a way for Glover to recognize a program that helped train him to stay alive.  

While his den walls are proudly adorned with medals like the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Presidential Citation and memorabilia like the M-1 rifle similar to the one he carried on the front line, only his heart holds the honor and courage of a soldier.

To learn more about setting up an ROTC scholarship, please contact Jana Duffy at (918) 594-8156 or make an online donation at OSUgiving.com. 

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