Alvin Price remembers well the Christmas he spent in Korea in 1951, and, no doubt, dozens of Korean children remember him too.
Price was serving as a battalion commander of the U.S. Army, 9th Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division in Hong Chow, in southeastern Korea, as Christmas approached in 1951.
"While I was there I wrote my family and told them I wanted them to send me some things to give the children, and they did," he said.
His family sent two big boxes containing about 150 different gifts for the children. The gifts included "everything from clothes to little pull toys," Price said.
He and a fellow soldier, John Burkett, went into the village of Hong Chow and gave away the gifts to the excited children.
"The kids, of course, were real happy to get them ... and we liked to do it," he said.
Price became well known in the area of Hong Chow, especially among the children.
"After I did this every time I went back to Hong Chow people would know me," he said.
Price is also a World War II veteran, having served in the U.S. Army Infantry, Americal Division, during the second world war.
His military training began very early in his life when he was enrolled in the San Antonio Military Academy in San Antonio, Texas, in the third grade. He later attended military school in Lexington, Mo.
He entered the military service in April 1942 and served in the South Pacific, spending quite a bit of time in Manila at Ft. McKinley.
After his W.W. II service, Price returned home to Texas where he enrolled in the University of Texas, graduating in 1948.
He went to work for Phillips Petroleum in Wichita, Kan., as an oil scout.
Price recalls exactly where he was when he heard of the United States’ involvement in the Korean War. He was driving home from an Oklahoma vs. Texas football game when the news came over the radio.
Shortly thereafter he learned that he had been recalled to service, and soon he was on his way to Korea.
Price, a Captain in the U.S. Army Infantry at the time, began serving as regimental communications officer in Hong Chow, and later succeeded Mark Clark III as battalion commander there.
He left the service in 1953 at the rank of Major.
Later that year, when Price was living in Lubbock, he received a call from the military telling him of a special award he was to receive.
"They told me I had been awarded the Crown of Thailand," he said.
Price recalled the events that happened one day when he and other infantry men were traveling in a Jeep in South Korea with the battalion commander of the Thailand battalion.
As they were traveling, they came under mortar fire and Price and his fellow soldiers "got out of the Jeep and ran to a ditch."
But the Thai battalion commander didn’t follow them and stayed in the Jeep.
"I went back and got him and pulled him over into the ditch," Price said.
Later Price was awarded the Fifth Order of the Crown of Thailand, the highest honor awarded by the Thai government. He received a medal and a letter of commendation.
Price has a number of medals of honor displayed in a case that his daughter had made for him as a surprise. Each one, no doubt, represents an interesting, if not amazing, story.
An immediate eye-catcher is his Purple Heart. That award came after Price was wounded in Inje, Korea. He was inside a house in Inje when it was bombed and the roof fell in, injuring him.
An Infantry medal in the display commends Price’s service in the two wars and is "the proudest thing that any Infantry man ever gets," he said.
After leaving the service in 1953, Price began a career in the oil business. He moved to Artesia in 1989 and started Independent Auto Rental.
He now works part time at the Artesia Do It Center, which he describes as a "nice company with nice folks."
Price and his wife, Nadine, are members of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Nadine Price is the director of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program.
The Prices have nine children between them, 16 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.