Debbie Putnam(L) and Tom Putnam(R) stand at the “Mother Russia” Soviet War Memorial in East Berlin in 1976, during their assignment in West Berlin with the U.S. Army.(Photo compliments of Tom and Debbie Putnam)
By Ryan Applegate
People’s Defender
Tom and Debbie Putnam have lived a lifetime of service, faith, and steadfast devotion to both their country and each other. Their story begins not behind the walls of Cold War Berlin, but in the neighborhoods of Dayton, Ohio, where two high school sweethearts first shared dreams of a future together. Those dreams would soon lead them halfway around the world, to one of the most heavily guarded cities on earth, where freedom and tyranny met face to face across concrete and barbed wire.
Both Tom and Debbie were raised in families that understood the meaning of sacrifice. “Our fathers and our uncles served in the military during World War II,” Tom recalled. “We grew up hearing the stories and admiring the courage and sacrifice it took them in fighting the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese so that the world could be free of that tyranny.” For Tom, those stories of courage became a calling. The Army recruiter who first met him noticed his aptitude for languages and sent him to the Defense Language Institute in California for a year of intensive Russian training. Debbie, meanwhile, had graduated from a vocational high school in Dayton with certification in dental assisting and wanted to apply her skills in service to the military. When Tom received his orders for West Berlin, he called her from California and asked if she would join him for three years behind the Iron Curtain. “She immediately said yes,” he said. “Debbie had just graduated from high school so we were young married teenagers in a foreign country, behind walls and barbed wire, facing an uncertain future. You can imagine what an adventure that was for a newly married young couple.”
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