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t m c » p u l s e | s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 9 24 Joe Ramirez, 88 I n November 1950, 18-year-old Houston native Joe Ramirez was captured while serving as a U.S. Army scout sniper in the Korean War. Held captive in North Korea for nearly three years—33 months and one day, to be exact—Ramirez expected to die in the prison camp. "I was shot five times when they captured me and they didn't have medical care in that camp," Ramirez recalled. "We lost 1,600 men that winter and I used to sit out there, looking at the piles of bodies, and wonder when I would be next." Because of harsh winters, malaria and so much time in captivity, Ramirez got down to 87 pounds as a prisoner of war. He believes his fellow soldiers' dandelion tea kept him alive. Upon his release, Ramirez went on to serve another 22 years in the mili- tary, retiring as a master sergeant. With war in his rear view mirror, another battle for survival lay ahead of him. "Seventeen years ago, I got colon cancer," Ramirez said. "They cut a big piece of my intestine to get rid of the two-inch strip of cancer." In retirement, Ramirez, now 87, found work teaching inmates at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice how to make eyeglasses. He enjoys staying active. "I wake up at 4 a.m. I'm on the road to the gym by 5 a.m. I go down and work out at the VA, lie down for a couple of hours, piddle around in the yard with my plants and then if my wife wants to go somewhere, we'll drive around. I've got a good wife—we've been married 34 years," he said. "My first wife died of breast cancer and we were married for 26 years—she's the mother of all my kids. I have two boys and two girls. I lost my young son in an accident eight years ago." In 2013, Ramirez was invited to the White House to honor his mentor and the man who baptized him, the late Father Emil Kapaun. Kapaun was a Roman Catholic priest and a U.S. Army captain who served as a chaplain in World War II and the Korean War. He died in 1951 as a prisoner of war in North Korea, in the same camp where Ramirez was held. "I was at the White House with Obama when he awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Father Kapaun," Ramirez said. "There were only five POWs invited and I was one of them." But as the years have passed, fewer and fewer of Ramirez' fellow soldiers are left. "We are like the veterans from the Second World War—we are too old," he said. "We used to have reunions every year, but they had to quit because too many of the guys were sick. You have to figure, I was 18 years old when I went to war and I am 88. A lot of them are gone." Earlier this summer, during a regular check-up at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center - Houston, Ramirez was told his cancer had returned. "They discovered the cancer about a month ago—they call it colon, but they said I have a spot on my liver and a spot on my lung," he said. "I started urinating blood and they found those spots." Ramirez has been going to the VA for chemotherapy treatments. "Life is great; I'm just happy that I'm here and alive today," he said. "Every morning when I get up, I open my eyes and I say, 'Thank you, Lord.'" — Britni R. McAshan