LUNENBURG, MASS. (WHDH) - A purple heart medal is back where it belongs after a Lunenburg woman found it in her basement more than a decade ago.
Just recently, a friend helped Larissa Anne McCauliffe track down who it belonged to – a World War I veteran. Now that hero’s heart has been returned to his son.
“I found a box, and it said, ‘purple heart,'” McCauliffe recalled.
She knew the medals she found in her basement 12 years ago after she bought the house were important but assumed they belonged to the previous owner, who had died.
“Thinking that it was the previous owner, in respect to him, I put it back where I found it and didn’t want to disturb it,” she said. “I figured I’ll just keep it here in memory of the owner.”
But last week, she told her friends about the purple heart medal.
After taking a closer look at it, they found a name on the back, which she never noticed before.
“But the name didn’t match the person who owned the house, so all three of us started researching the heck out of it,” she said.
Although they didn’t find the owner, they found his son, who is 92 years old and lives in the next town over. The medal was awarded to his father, who was injured during World War I.
“It’s 100 years old, preserved in a box,” she said. “Finding this gentleman and presenting it, it’s just overwhelming.
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, had all the paperwork regarding his father’s service and was blown away.
“He said, ‘All I wanted was those medals. I never thought in a million years I’d get those back,'” she said.
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