Oconee’s one Medal of Honor shown to outside eyes

The world outside Oconee this week got to see one of the county’s top possessions when, for the first time outside the county, the Medal of Honor awarded to Lewis G. Watkins was displayed at a Greenville event organized by that county’s veterans association.  And a volunteer at the Oconee Veterans Museum at Walhalla, Pam Dowd, felt honored to be part of both the motorcade and the ceremony that followed.  Watkins lost his life in fighting during the Korean conflict in 1952, but not before he carried an act of valor that later posthumously earned him the country’s highest military honor.  Dowd, whose dad was part of the D-Day landing in the Second World War, said she doubts that anyone who watched the ceremony could watch it with a dry eye.  Some U-S survivors of the Korea fighting were in attendance and they were honored with quilts that were draped over them at the ceremony.  Dowd also was impressed and grateful to officers of the Oconee Sheriff’s Office who led the motorcade and stood at attention besides Watkins’ medal.  That Medal of Honor, the only one ever awarded to an Oconee serviceman, has a special place in one of the rooms at the veterans’ museum in the Rock Building next to the Oconee Courthouse.