Joseph W Grugan was born on July 2,1918, in Renovo, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Herbert Ben and Anna Grugan. He died on December 13, 1977, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania at the age of 59. He is buried in the Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport, PA.

Joseph served with the United States Air Forces during World War II, enlisting on October 14, 1942, at Harrisburg, PA. He was an aerial gunnery instructor at Tyndall Field, Florida in 1943. He was sent overseas in November of 1943 as part of an air combat crew. Joseph was serving as a turret gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber with the 381st Bomb Group and was reported missing following a bombing raid over Frankfurt, Germany on January 29, 1944.

He was later acknowledged to be a prisoner of war in Germany by the State Department. Joseph and his surviving crewmates were held at Stalag Luft 6 and later transferred to Stalag Luft 3. The conditions of these POW camps were deplorable. Joseph was part of the Infamous Death March in which the POWs were forced to try to stay ahead of the advancing Russians. SGT Joseph Grugan was a prisoner of war in a Nazi Germany stalag from January 29, 1944, to June 1945.