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| In this May 27, 2016 photo, Zachariah Fike, founder of the organization Purple Hearts Reunited, holds in St. Albans, Vt., a certificate issued to a World War I service member wounded in battle. Fike's Vermont-based non-profit group Purple Hearts Reunited is working to return 100 medals and certificates by next April, the 100th anniversary of the United States' entry into World War I. Over the years the organization has returned hundreds of lost Purple Hearts and other medals to the people who won them or their descendants. |
ST. ALBANS,
Vt. (AP) -- A group that seeks to reunite lost Purple Hearts with
service members or their descendants is embarking on an ambitious
project: to return 100 such medals or certificates earned in World War I
before the 100th anniversary next April of the United States' entry
into the conflict.
Zachariah Fike, of the
Vermont-based Purple Hearts Reunited, began the project after noticing
he had in his collection of memorabilia a total of exactly 100 Purple
Hearts or equivalent lithographs awarded for injuries or deaths from the
Great War.
"You're honoring fallen heroes,"
said Fike, a Vermont National Guard captain wounded in Afghanistan in
2010. "These are our forefathers; these are the guys that have shed
their blood or sacrificed their lives for us. Any opportunity to bring
light to that is always a good thing."
The
lithographs, known as a Lady Columbia Wound Certificate and showing a
toga-wearing woman
knighting an infantry soldier on bended knee, were
what World War I military members wounded or killed while serving were
awarded before the Purple Heart came into being in 1932. World War I
service members who already had a lithograph became eligible for a
Purple Heart at that time.
The Purple Hearts
and the certificates include the name of the service member to whom they
were awarded. Fike is working with researchers to try to find the
descendants of the service members.
So far, he
has found about two dozen, including a handful of children, most now in
their 90s, so they can be presented with commemorations that somehow
were lost.
The first return that's part of the
World War I project was over Memorial Day weekend, on Saturday in
Hanover, Pennsylvania, where the medal awarded to Cpl. William Frederick
Zartman, who was severely wounded while fighting in France on July 22,
1918, was returned to his grandnephew. After the war, Zartman became a
barber in York County, Pennsylvania. He died in 1948.
Zartman's
descendant Wayne Bowers, 64, of Thomasville, Pennsylvania, said before
the ceremony that he was unaware of the details of his uncle's World War
I service until he heard from Fike's organization at the beginning of
May.
"He died before I was born, and I never
knew anything more about it," Bowers said. "My whole family is in shock,
really. ... It's a fantastic thing to find out."
Fike's
efforts began in 2009, after his mother gave him a Purple Heart and dog
tags she had bought in an antique shop. He realized he should return
the medal to its owner, Pvt. Corrado A.G. Piccoli, an Italian immigrant
from the Watertown, New York, area who Fike had learned was killed in
France in 1944.
Fike later returned the medal to Piccoli's sister.
Since
Fike started Purple Hearts Reunited in 2012, the organization has
presented hundreds of medals and lesser memorabilia received by his
organization, including dog tags, earned in conflicts ranging from World
War I to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So
far, the most articles Fike's organization has returned in one year is
60. It plans to return the World War I medals by early April 6, 2017.
And it will continue to return medals awarded in other conflicts.
Fike
is working with the Village Frame Shoppe and Gallery in St. Albans to
mount the certificates and the medals in frames that include biographies
of the men who earned them and, in some cases, photographs.
He
is also raising money to help pay the $1,500 cost of each presentation,
which includes buying the certificates and the medals, frequently
online; framing them; and the presentations themselves, usually done
with military honors in the hometown of the descendants.
When
he can't find a descendant, the commemoratives are donated to museums
or historical societies near the service members' hometowns - what Fike
calls "homes of honor."
