In Piqua, local views of the Vietnam War reflected national feelings of both pride and confusion. Citizens joined the “Letters for Life” campaign in 1970 on behalf of prisoners of war, and Piqua Daily Call assistant news editor James W. DeWeese went to Paris in an unsuccessful effort to deliver the letters to the Hanoi Peace delegation. In 1970 the state activated the local Ohio National Guard unit to help suppress anti-Vietnam student rioting in Columbus. The war touched the community directly in 1966 when William Pitsenbarger became the first of eleven men from Piqua to die in Vietnam, and in 1967 Piqua High School graduate Air Force Major William J. Baugh was shot down over North Vietnam, taken prisoner, and held as a P.O.W. until 1973. Pitsenbarger graduated from Piqua High School in 1962, joined the Air Force in 1963, and after extensive training qualified for Air Force Pararescue duty. In Vietnam he flew more than 250 combat rescue missions, including one in which he saved a South Vietnamese soldier from a burning mine field and received the Airman's Medal. On April 11, 1966, he volunteered for a helicopter medical evacuation mission, and when Viet Cong fire disabled the helicopter and forced it to withdraw, he remained on the ground to aid the wounded and was killed in action while saving the lives of others. He received the Medal of Honor on December 8, 2000.