Bruce Salisbury wants people to remember Marine Lance Cpl. Kenneth Lee Worley.  Salisbury, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, wears a button with a photo of Worley on his shirt collar. "He’s one of my heroes," Salisbury said.

The city lacks a memorial for Worley, who gave his life for fellow soldiers and earned the Medal of Honor.  That has Salisbury, of Aztec, pushing the city to announce it has dedicated land for a memorial to Worley on March 25, or National Medal of Honor Day.

Marine Corps League and city officials say a memorial will be built, but they have not established a timeline. Details of plans to build one are sketchy six months after those officials learned about him and four decades after Worley died.  Worley’s family and Marines that served with him have waited too long, Salisbury said.  "That’s a long time for them to wait to have him recognized and more than just having his name on a rock," he said.

Worley died Aug. 12, 1968, at age 20, when he threw himself on a grenade nearest him and his comrades, according to his medal’s citation. His body absorbed the force of the explosion so his five comrades sustained only minor wounds.  "Through his extraordinary initiative and inspiring valor in the face of almost certain death, he saved his comrades from serious injury and possible loss of life," the citation says.

The machine gunner and rifleman is one of 293 Marines and more than 3,400 service members to receive the medal since it was established during the Civil War.

Born in Farmington on April 27, 1948, Worley is the only Marine born in New Mexico to earn the award, said Terence W. Barrett, a psychologist and instructor at North Dakota State University who has written an unpublished book about Medal of Honor recipients.  Barrett researched Worley and 180 other Medal of Honor recipients as part of a study on bravery. There are a "multitude" of hospitals, airports, parks, streets, schools, highways, bridges, playgrounds, scholarships and others named for the recipients, Barrett said. The U.S. Navy alone has named 55 ships after award recipients whom Barrett studied.  Some World War II recipients had ships named for them before that war ended. Other recipients have had to wait much longer, some 20 to 60 years, as the military investigated their actions to determine whether to give an award and then for sponsorship of a memorial.

"The tribute in Farmington to Kenneth Worley coming 40 years after his actions is not entirely unusual," Barrett said.  The city, Marine Corps League and others should take responsibility for getting the memorial built, he said.

Steve Lynn: slynn@daily-times.com

Bruce Lee Salisbury has a reputation for being stubborn. He first demonstrated that in 1945 at the age of 15 when he joined the service after his mother refused to allow him to play football in high school. He retired from the Air Force as a master sergeant in 1966.

Since he had not finished high school, Bruce started college studies at the San Juan Branch in Farmington, along with his wife Dorothy. They had three children in school; each had a job and a burning desire to finish their educations. Dottie and Bruce graduated in 1979. His degree was through the College of Arts and Sciences; hers, the College of Agriculture and Home Economics.

In 1998, a diagnosis of lung cancer forced him to stop working. During his extended rehab process, he began working on the project to memorialize friends and family members either killed or gone missing while fighting for America. His goal: designate a mountain peak as Mount KIA/MIA that could become a place where families and friends journey to remember lost loved ones.

When Bruce started his quest, he attempted to have one of 33 mountains (within Colorado) with the name Sheep Mountain, renamed, but met with resistance. So, he looked for a suitable peak that was without a designated name figuring there would be no real reason for refusal. He was right; there was no real reason for refusal, but plenty of resistance just the same. One of the biggest objections to overcome was presented by the Bureau of Land Management in July of 2005. They voiced concern about naming a feature with a U.S. Military commemorative subject matter, in the midst of many features commemoratively named after Native Americans. Andrew Cowell, a linguist who specializes in Native American languages, stated that the name "KIAMIA" could be construed and possibly misrepresented as a garbled Ute name.

Not one willing to accept ‘No’ for an answer, Bruce contacted Thomas Givon, Distinguished Professor (emeritus) of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Oregon, who had worked for the Southern Ute Tribe for 10 years as the founding director of the Ute Language Program. That language is complex but it was Givon’s opinion that Kiya-miya-vat is a rather appropriate name for a mountain that would honor Ute, and all veterans.

A warrior, once departed, crosses to "the other side," a place often described as one where a person may walk about in peace, without care, happy; in other words, " a place where people walk about laughing." Final approval came first from the Bureau of Land Management in 2005 and the US Forest Service in 2006. Mt. KIA/MIA is an 11,282 ft summit in the Sawatch Range in north-central Saguache County, CO, close to Marshall Pass, from which one can see the mountain close-up.

This is the next stage in the project. I hope one day to bring it all together and be able to tell you the COMPLETE story of our young hero Kenneth Lee Worley.