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HEARTMedal donated to local history collectionFROM PAGE IEAuxiliary of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.She presented Pfc. Lensen’s medal to the library on Dec. 28.“We ask that you keep it safe,” Shattuck said.Area veteran John Milks attended the ceremony and commented on its significance.“It’s wonderful to see the general public appreciating us and to remember these things,” Milks said.The Purple Heart Medal is America’s oldest military decoration, originally established on August 7,1782 by Gen. George Washington. The primary purpose of the award is to recognize those who received wounds while in the service of the United States military, according to Medals of America. Washington’s profile adorns the medal.Lensen’s medal moved from the two-dimensional certificate to gold-rimmed medallion after Zachariah Fike, founder and CEO of Purple Hearts Reunited, discovered the certificate on eBay, purchased it and set out to find Lensen’s relatives.He applied for the medal, framed it and presented it to Nancy Lensen-Tomasson,the only surviving relative of the deceased veteran, in Washington D.C. on Veterans Day.“I was unaware that he had earned the Purple Heart so I don’t have any family stories about it,” Lensen-Tomasson said. “It was a complete surprise to me when I was called up. It was a very beautiful, large lithograph.”Lensen-Tomasson, 85, asked that the Purple Heart remain in her uncle’s hometown as she resides in Washington, D.C.“He worked in Traverse City when he enlisted,” she said. “I didn’t know him well. I only met him a couple times when I was a child.”But she owns an original photograph of her uncleand father, dressed in U.S Navy uniforms, taken in 1917 in front of her grandparents’ house in Traverse City. Lensen-Tomasson said she hopes to make a trip up north this year to see the medal on display in the local history collection.Barritt, a special collections librarian, said that she wants the library to not only be an institution that cares about history, but also one that respects and honors the man who earned his place in it, she said.
Newspaper Details
Traverse City Record Eagle
Traverse City, Michigan, US
Sun, Jan 15, 2017
Page 26
Full Page
Clipped by
Melissa M.
NA, 19 Dec 2023
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