James Richard Hendrix (August 20, 1925 – November 14, 2002) was a United States Army soldier and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in World War II. Hendrix was born and raised in Lepanto, Arkansas, the son of a sharecropper. He left school after the third grade to work in the fields. In 1944, at age 18, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to basic training in Florida, the first time he had been more than a few miles from his hometown.