[If you should choose to adopt this prompt to contribute stories of folks who have gone out of their way to lend genealogy-related assistance to others, I would greatly appreciate a mention to Filiopietism Prism whenever you do so. Thank you! And please do use the same photograph below to illustrate the prompt. ;-) ]
[This post is unusual in that it is posted today after having been first published here on The Prism this past Monday as a "Military Monday" post. It does not involve any ancestor or relative of mine. The piece was first prepared as a "Samaritan Sunday" post, but I believe it deserves as wide an audience as possible. I thought posting it as a Military Monday post might bring it to the attention of more blog followers (via Thomas MacEntee's GeneaBloggers) than just posting it in my Samaritan Sunday series.]
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Robert Bates was one of the sailors aboard the USS Arizona on December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and thereby brought the U.S. into World War II. He remains entombed in the ship to this day. The only thing of his that was returned to his family after his death was his Purple Heart -- but that medal had gone missing about 71 years ago.
As anyone who has visited the Memorial at Pearl Harbor knows, the Arizona is still there and even after all these decades oil can be seen leaking up from the wreckage of the ship (2.3 quarts per day). The Arizona remains the final resting place for many of the 1,177 sailors (out of a crew of 1,512) who were killed as a result of the attack on December 7, 1941. The wreck of the ship was designated a national shrine in 1962. The ship is considered a war grave and any survivors of the attack that sunk the ship are entitled, if they so desire, to have their ashes placed within the ship with their shipmates. Anyone who ever served on the Arizona at times other than on December 7, 1941 is entitled to have his ashes scattered in the water above the ship.
It is believed that Robert Bates' Purple Heart was presented to his mother. She died in 1945 and following her death the medal was lost -- that is until a truck driver in Bakersfield, California found the medal on the side of a road with other items. Since the items were found near a VFW Post, the driver gave it to the VFW.
The next step in the medal's journey was when Ken Hooper, a history teacher, was contacted. He and his archives class set about trying to identify the person to whom the medal belonged. In March of this year in Tyler, Texas relatives of Robert Bates had the medal hand delivered to them by Good Samaritan Ken Hooper.
Read here the full story of how a string of Good Samaritans contributed to the return of Robert Bates' long-lost Purple Heart to his family!
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Photograph of the The Good Samaritan sculpture by Francois-Leon Sicard (1862 - 1934). The sculpture is located in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, France. The photograph is by Marie-Lan Nguyen and has been placed in the public domain by her. See, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Good_Samaritan_Sicard_Tuileries.jpg
The depiction of the Purple Heart is an image in the public domain because it is a work of the United States Government and is a United States Military Award. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Purpleheart.jpg
USS Arizona Memorial aerial photograph has been released to the public by the United States Navy. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Arizona_Memorial_(aerial_view).jpg
For more information on the history of the battleship Arizona (BB-39), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Arizona_(BB-39)
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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