Military stories from past to present, both wars.

The Medal of Honor

August 23rd, 2015 Posted in Military

The Medal of Honor,

There is nothing in the world that symbolizes when a person has reached deep down inside of themselves in a time of crisis like the Medal of Honor does.  Everyone has the potential for acts of greatness and in the Military that is reflected by issuing this medal when it happens.  For the most part, that individual did not make it home and the ones who did will tell you that this MOH is representative of all their friends who didn’t make it back from war.

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Purple Hearts Reunited received such a medal in the mail two months ago.  It was blank on the back and no return address.  There was a short note in a Female handwriting saying “I found this in the closet and it belongs to your organization” with no name or address.  I then contacted Col Leo Thorsness, VN USAF, MOH and POW about this medal.  He forwarded this to Tom Cottone, the FBI agent who helped get Loyd’s in NY shut down for producing illegal unissued actual Medals of Honor.  This Air Force Medal is one of the 300 that made it out of the factory and into the hands of the underground collectors.

 

Working with LtCol Hal Fritz, the president of the Medal of Honor Society, I asked for permission to display this in a local museum that I support called the Military Heritage Museum of North Texas.  See, you have a greater chance of winning the lotto then you do actually seeing this medal in person, never mind meeting one of the 79 recipients still alive.

 

Col Fritz agreed with me about the value of allowing it to be displayed and said that if we have “For Display only” engraved on the back so no one could make this a real medal, we could display it so school kids would know the history behind it.

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One of my collateral jobs is working closely with over 20 Medal of Honor recipients through SkyBall, a large Gala in the DFW area so this made it easy to reach out to Leo and ask if we could build our display around him.   So on Oct 22nd  2015, I’m proud to say that Leo Thorsness will travel to the Military Heritage Museum for the dedication to the Medal of Honor and the men it represents.  There will be displays and interactive computer programs to educate the young men and women who visit and inspire them to do great things in their lives.

 

I would like to thank Zach Fike founder of Purple Hearts Reunited for donating it, Col Leo Thorsness USAF for allowing us to honor him, LtCol Hal Fritz USA for giving us permission to display this important Medal and Mark Witham for caring so much for our Service men and women that he has devoted his life to this.

 

If anyone has one of these Medals and would like to donate to our Museum since you can’t sell it, we will gladly take it anonymously; no questions asked and add it to our dedication to those who have given the ultimate measure for our country, send it to : Purple Hearts Reunited | P.O. Box 2121 | Georgia, VT 05468.

 

Semper Fi,

LtCol Bell

“Taco”

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