It would be difficult to conjure a more unlikely man to emerge from Port St. Joe and be forever remembered and honored due to a breathtaking act of heroism for which he would posthumously earn the nation's highest military honor. But 51 years ago today, Feb. 21, 1968, Staff Sgt. Clifford Chester Sims passionately achieved that distinction, saving others at the cost of his own life, in a jungle thousands of miles away. Miles away from a hometown, cloaked in the ways of the Jim Crow south, that had barely acknowledged his life as a homeless youngster taken in by the Sims family...
