6 Purple Hearts are unclaimed in Massachusetts. The state needs help finding the heroes' families.
There are six unclaimed Purple Hearts at the Massachusetts Treasurer's office. The state is hoping to get the medals back to the families of those who were honored with them.
The Purple Heart is the oldest military award in the United States. It is so treasured, many are kept in family safe deposit boxes. In Massachusetts, after eight years, unclaimed boxes at banks are turned over to the Unclaimed Property Division of the state treasury.
For two employees there, reuniting the six medals with the veterans' families has become a patriotic mission.
"Anyone who received the Purple Heart obviously gave the last full measure of sacrifice and service," said Marine veteran James Roy, a manager in the Unclaimed Property Division. "It's an important thing that families continue to have these in their possession and remember those people and the sacrifices they made on our behalf."
Roy's colleague Christina Lambert has spent hours looking into the backgrounds of each of the six Purple Heart recipients.
"Other states around the country have been returning military medals and they face the same issues we're facing, that it's incredibly hard to reunite the medals with the recipients or even the box owners," she said.
Lambert and Roy are trying to find the families of:
- Thomas Flynn of Worcester, who served in World War I
- Joseph Arudda of New Bedford, who fought in World War II
- Edward McCabe of Worcester and Framingham, who served in World War II
- William Bemis of Springfield, who fought in World War II
- Robert Boquist of Rutland, who served in the Korean War
- James Mooney of Everett, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, who fought in Vietnam.
"Just learning a little bit of why they received the medal, what war they fought in, was really inspiring," Lambert said.
There are also a few complications in the search. Each branch of the United States military awards the Purple Heart out in their own way. Then, there was a massive fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis where all the military records were kept. Millions of files were destroyed, according to the National Archives.
If you are familiar with one of the six names or if you want to search for other military items that might have been in a safe deposit box, contact the Massachusetts Treasurer's Office at 617-367-0400. You can also visit findmassmoney.gov.
What is the Purple Heart?
The Purple Heart was designed by General George Washington in 1782 to boost the morale of troops at the end of the Revolutionary War.
It was originally called the Badge of Merit, to "recognize heroic acts by his troops," according to the Defense Department. The badge was a cloth purple heart with the word "merit" stitched across it in white. The current medal, designed in 1932, has a profile image of Washington.