Margaret and Colonel Sidney C. Carpenter
Colonel Sidney Crider Carpenter was born January 8, 1914, in Molino, Missouri, as the eldest son of Otto Llyod and Mary Lena Calloway Carpenter. Sidney lived his earliest years in Molino on a farm until the family moved to McArthur, Ohio, in 1918. In 1922, the family came to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Being a “military brat,” he considers Bowling Green to his hometown. He attended Bowling Green City Grade School and later College High. During high school, he played basketball as center and guard and carried the Park City Daily News, walking a 6-mile route until he saved enough money for a bicycle. As a senior at College High, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which allowed him to get his diploma while working, as he said, “in the woods.”
His stint with the CCC sent him to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for training, then to Harlan, Kentucky, to build a road on Pine Mountain to the fire tower, and then to Lesley County, Kentucky, to install that county’s first telephone line. In 1934, having saved enough money from his CCC work, he enrolled at WKU, where he met the love of his life, Margaret Jane Richardson, on his first day. He played basketball as a freshman, but without a scholarship to support expenses, decided to join the Army National Guard in 1935, to help pay for school. He also joined the ROTC rifle team, which never lost a match during his time on the team. He graduated with a major in industrial arts in 1939, before he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Army Reserves and took a teaching position in industrial arts at Cloverport, Kentucky.
He and Margaret married on December 27, 1939, at her family’s home near Alvaton, Kentucky. He continued teaching while working on his master’s degree at the University of Missouri. He then worked as a Boy Scouts of America Executive out of Lexington and lived in Danville, Kentucky. One of his professors offered an instructor’s position at the Navy Pier in Chicago, where he worked until 1942, when he was ordered to active duty. He reported to Camp Wolters, Texas, for training and then was assigned to Fort Knox.
During his military career Sidney was, among his many assignments, a commanding officer, department director of the Armored School, and director of the Leader’s School at Fort Knox. He was among the first occupation forces in Japan at the end of WWII, saw combat in the Korean War as senior advisor to the Second Republic of Korea Infantry Division, and received the Distinguished Service Cross and the Eulji Cordon Korean medal in 1952 for extraordinary heroism on the battlefield on October 24, 1952. He was a Paratrooper, a Distinguished Rifleman, received the CIB and numerous other awards. He was the Executive Officer of the U. S. International Shooting Team in the 37th World Shooting Championships in Moscow, U.S.S.R.; served as Juryman and Referee for the U. S. International Shooting Team in the 38th World Shooting Championships in Cairo, Egypt; coached the US Shooting Team in the 1958 Pan American games, coached the US Shooting Team in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy; and was the National Rifle and Pistol Matches Director at Camp Perry, Ohio. He retired in 1966, from his last assignment at Fort Meade, Maryland, as a Regular Army Colonel.
He and Margaret returned to Bowling Green in 1972, after working in Washington, DC, for the National Rifle Association and Pomponio Brothers Realty and Construction. In Bowling Green, he built houses with R. H. Richardson, worked for Cumberland Bank as an appraiser, ran for city commissioner, and served as a Kentucky Colonel. He was a member of the Cumberland Trace Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America, where he was honored as the chapter’s Member of the Year in 2012. He was a faithful member of State Street Methodist Church and enjoyed fishing, golf, and poker with his friends. He was a devoted family man and true gentleman. He and Margaret were married for 51 years until her passing in 1990, and his in 2014. They had two children, Sidney Richardson Carpenter and Philip Lloyd Carpenter.
To honor Margaret’s memory, Sidney established the Margaret and Colonel Sidney C. Carpenter Scholarship Fund in 2003. The fund assists deserving WKU students who are in the ROTC program and are seeking commission as an officer in the United States Army. Through this fund, Margaret and Sidney’s legacies live on in perpetuity.