OKMULGEE, Okla. — A Green Country family is pushing to hear their late hero's name called as a Medal of Honor recipient - the highest honor a military service member can receive.
Charlotte Cowans remembers her father Roy Burleson as a great and busy dad. When she got older, he began to tell her more about his service.
A Buffalo Soldier in World War II, Charlotte talks about the bravery he showed that earned him two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.
Before he passed away on Nov. 30, Burleson would talk to anyone who would listen about his time in the Army.
"The men that had been blown up. You had to stay there with them. No place else to go," remembered Burleson in 2015.
Cowans is proud of her father's service, and the sacrifices he made, like when she talks about him being blown six feet in the air trying to activate explosives.
Roy was an Army engineer who would talk about his duty in demolitions, clearing out paths for the men around him.
"He was going against enemy fire when he had to do the crawling to set the charges off," Cowans said.
Now, Burleson's family is pushing for an even higher honor - his dream until the day he died.
"You know I'm going to jump up and down. I'll jump up and down if he call me. I would never turn that down." Burleson said in 2015 about receiving the Medal of Honor.
Even though it would now be posthumous, Cowans is now picking up the paperwork her family first filled out in 2014, before Burleson's health began to decline, and is reaching out to U.S. representatives to help bestow the highest honor to her late father.
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