Oklahoma Leaders Pay Tribute To WWII Hero Ernest Childers

The State Senate honored one of Oklahoma's Own. A portrait of Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Childers was unveiled inside the Senate Chamber Wednesday.

Childers was a full-blood Creek Indian. He joined the Oklahoma Guard in 1937 before fighting in World War II.

Childers is the only Native American Guardsman to earn the nation's highest award for valor - the Medal of Honor. 

While serving in the infantry in Italy, he killed two enemy snipers, attacked two machine gun nests and captured an artillery observer - all with a broken ankle. 

9/16/2009 Related Story: Broken Arrow War Hero Honored With Statue

He was born in Broken Arrow in 1918 and died in Muskogee in 2005.