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Wounded Kansas soldier receives presidential visit

Capt. Charles Ziegenfuss is a member of Covenant, Junction City

By Melodie Woerman

Editor, The Harvest

Captain Charles Ziegenfuss, a member of the Church of the Covenant in Junction City, received a visit from President George W. Bush at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where the soldier is recovering from wounds he received while on duty in Iraq.

The president visited Ziegenfuss and others while at the hospital in early July.

Ziegenfuss was wounded by a roadside bomb on June 21. He was serving as commander of Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Division and was stationed 50 miles north of Baghdad. His unit is based at Fort Riley, near Junction City.

According to information posted by Ziegenfuss’s wife Carren to his web log, he suffered severe injuries to both hands, including loss of the little finger on his left with accompanying nerve damage, and trauma to his right thumb.

Other injuries included deep wounds to a leg and an arm, both of which required skin grafts, shrapnel wounds to his face and damage to both eardrums. Carren wrote that the nerve damage to his hand caused great pain, but it was being managed better as time went on.

She noted that one evening she even was able to sit on his bed and watch an episode of “The Simpsons” with him. “It’s the simple little things like sitting next to your spouse to watch TV that make a big difference,” she said.

The couple’s young children, Creighton and Adell, are staying with Carren’s sister in Billings, Mont. while Ziegenfuss recovers at Walter Reed. They and Carren’s mother were flown to Billings by a Covenant member, according to the parish’s rector, the Rev. Dale Plummer.

A stream of visitors

Ziegenfuss and his family have had other high profile visitors in addition to the president. They included Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a graduate of Kansas State University in nearby Manhattan; Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld; several members of Congress; pitching ace and Cy Young award winner Roger Clemens of the Houston Astros; and members of the Colorado Rockies baseball team.

Service to those who serve

Plummer said Covenant has six other members who currently are on active duty and deployed overseas, with one in Korea and the rest in Iraq. None of those soldiers has been reported injured so far, he said.

The other parish serving an army base, St. Paul’s, Leavenworth, does not have any members currently serving overseas, according to parish administrator Barbara Gregory.

She said that members’ relatives are deployed, including her own son, and that to date none have sustained serious injuries.

Plummer said the parish works to support the families of soldiers serving overseas, and that care starts with special prayers and blessing on the soldier’s last Sunday in church before being deployed. Covenant also displays a map of Iraq in the parish hall, pinpointing where soldiers are stationed.

Plummer said the parish takes seriously its service to members of the armed forces. “The founding of the parish is directly contributed to the soldiers and chaplains at Fort Rile, and it is our desire to continue to offer a place of prayer and Christian faith for military families who wish to worship in a community parish off-post.”

He also noted Carren Ziegenfuss is a member of the vestry at Covenant.