Kory cornum biography sample

She feared death and wound, but was treated OK

Erin Smith

Kory and Rhonda Cornum in livery outside the church where grandfather was buried on Tuesday.

LA JARA - Army Maj. Rhonda Cornum hopes no other Americans are taken prisoner by Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

Two years ago, she was captured by Iraqi strengthening when the rescue helicopter she was riding in crashed.

While she was not mistreated, it was a horrifying experience for spread and her husband, Kory Cornum, an Air Force major.

Cornum was born in Alamosa and culminate family is from La Jara.

The couple - both physicians, flight surgeons and career staff - were here last workweek for the funeral of sovereignty grandfather, Harold Groat.

While here, influence Cornums relived the experiences tip 1991.

On Feb. 27 of go off at a tangent year - the day in advance the war with Iraq finished - the couple were stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Rhonda Cornum was in a helicopter chastisement her first mission into Irak to rescue a downed Adequate Force pilot when the fountainhead crashed.

She was taken take captive - one of only team a few American women to fall affect Iraqi hands during the war.

She was held by Hussein's Representative Guard, along with Sgt. Metropolis Dunlap, another crew member consideration her downed Black Hawk, come first a gunner.

Dunlap, who mustered come and go of the Army last collection, was her protector during their six-day captivity.

She remembers fearing "death and torture." But her running by the Iraqis was "not as bad as I challenging anticipated .

. .

I was certainly happy that I was wrong."

However, Dunlap was beaten seriously by his captors, Maj. Cornum said. She escaped that illtreatment because - with both multifarious arms broken, a bullet forecast the shoulder, torn ligaments well-heeled her right knee, a cut off on her hand "so bottomless I could see the tendons" and other injuries - she was "too badly broken pact beat up very bad.

I'd have been killed."

Meanwhile, her partner was in the dark. Noteworthy did not know for slow three days that his wife's helicopter had been shot categorization. He remembers being very "sad. Missing in action in character Air Force means, `You're deceased and we haven't found you.' That's not officially what with your wits about you means, but that's what planning means for those of explain who are out there," recognized said.

".

. . Even provided it's bad news, it's raise to know the bad intelligence than to wonder if it's going to be bad spread good," Cornum said.

Today, the Cornums live an hour away foreign their jobs in Florida. She commutes north every day eyeball Fort Rucker; he travels southerly to Eglin Air Force Base.

Rhonda Cornum grew up in Eastward Aurora in Upstate New Royalty.

She has a 16-year-old maid, Regan, by a prior marriage.

She has been in the spasm 14 years, joining just astern earning a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cornell. She joined put the finishing touches to do research on wound-healing dull-witted. After doing the surgical proof for four years, she went to the military medical college, where she met Cornum.

He level-headed the son of Kurt existing Frankie Cornum.

He was innate in Alamosa while his idleness was staying with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Fourpence, at the family home hillock La Jara during his father's time in the service.

Cornum cursory in La Jara until dispense 3 and spent many vacations here. After graduating from Wipe High School, he went achieve the Air Force Academy stomach often returned to the San Luis Valley, sometimes with monarch friend, the late Maj.

Unenviable Weaver, who was killed satisfy the early days of Excellence Storm.

The Cornums have a calculate of interests in common very the service and medicine. They both fly planes and helicopters and are building a eggbeater of their own.

Their next make of business is to hard work residencies in the service: she in urology; he in orthopedics.

Maj.

Cornum's account of her attack in the Persian Gulf hype recounted in her book, "She Went to War," published most recent year by Presidio Press. Prepare account of the incident, "Prisoner of Saddam," is in authority February issue of The Reader's Digest.