Roger Youderian was born on January 21, 1924, in Sumatra, in the American state of Montana, the son of a farmer of Armenian descent. At age nine he contracted polio, which left him with mild aftereffects, but he overcame them well enough to play basketball in high school.
In 1943 he enlisted in the United States Army and became a paratrooper, serving in Europe during World War II. He took part in the Battle of the Bulge and the jump across the Rhine in Operation Varsity. While still a soldier, he was converted to the gospel with the help of a military chaplain.
Back in the United States, he graduated in Christian education from Northwestern College in Minnesota in 1950. The following year he married Barbara Orton, a college classmate, and the couple decided to serve as missionaries sent by the evangelical agency Gospel Missionary Union.
In 1953, Roger, Barbara, and their young daughter, Beth, sailed for Ecuador. After studying Spanish in Quito, the family settled in Macuma, in the Amazon jungle, to work alongside veteran missionaries Frank and Marie Drown among the Jivaro people.
The first years were marked by language difficulties and discouragement. About a year later, he extended the work to the Achuar people, but struggled to see spiritual fruit: near Christmas 1955 he even wrote in his diary that he was close to giving up, that he saw no future in that work, and that the wisest thing would be to leave.
Days later, still in December 1955, he recorded in the same diary a renewal of surrender, deciding to die to himself in order to live for God. It was during this period that missionary pilot Nate Saint invited him to join the team that would attempt the first peaceful contact with the Huaorani, then called Auca, an isolated people feared for their attacks on outsiders. Youderian accepted, even knowing the risks.
On January 3, 1956, he joined Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Pete Fleming at a camp on the bank of the Curaray River, at the site named Palm Beach. After apparently friendly initial contacts on January 6, the five were attacked and speared to death by Huaorani warriors on January 8, when Youderian, the last of the five to be struck, was trying to use the radio to call for help.
The news, illustrated by photographs from photographer Cornell Capa in Life magazine, spread around the world and spurred on a new generation of missionaries. Years later, Huaorani involved in the attack converted to the gospel, and relatives of the five martyrs returned to live among the people who had killed them.
