By David Madison, 09/27/25
Before Wyoming World War II hero Sgt. Thomas L. Cotner left to serve in the Pacific, his mother hosted a dinner party at Club La Vida in Evansville, a restaurant and night club known for its roulette wheel.
The event was noteworthy enough to earn coverage in the local newspaper, which reported the dinner was to honor Tom, who had just finished training at an air base in Illinois.
Tom’s brother and fraternal twin, Ted Cotner, was also in the Army Air Corps and would be stationed at Hickam Field in Hawaii, where on Dec. 7, 1941, he saw his first action.
Ted Cotner’s commander praised the young airman for his heroic response to the Pearl Harbor attack.
The Cotner boys were born in Worland, but moved to Casper where some friends and neighbors knew them by their stepfather’s last name: Stoutenburg.
Tom deployed to the Pacific and joined the vicious fighting in and over New Guinea, earning recognition for bravery in August 1942. A month later, he and the other eight members of his B-17 Flying Fortress crew disappeared.
The Casper Star-Tribune captured the anguish of the moment on Oct. 14, 1942, reporting, "Word was received in Casper on Monday night from the War Department that Sergeant Tom Stoutenberg, son of Mr. and Mrs. Emma Stoutenberg, is reported missing in action since September 16th. No details were contained in the message."
The paper noted that Tom was "on duty somewhere in the southwest Pacific battle zone" when he disappeared. Further coverage from April 1943 showed a photograph of Tom sitting with members of his unit, the notorious Dirty 30th Squadron of the 19th Bombardment Group.
Eight decades later, wreckage of the B-17 Flying Fortress where Tom served as a radio operator and gunner was identified high in the jungle by an investigator named Justin Taylan.
