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At last, mom's medals home A daughter connects with her mother's military past as her honors arrive after 60 years.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Anna Marie Kukec Daily Herald Staff Writer

The package arrived from Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. It contained the World War II medals and ribbons my mother, Angeline, earned but never saw.

It took nearly 60 years to get them.

Service Lapel Pin. American Campaign Medal. World War II Victory Medal. Good Conduct Medal. They were pomp and circumstance packed into weighty disks the size of JFK silver dollars. One had a vibrant red-and-white striped ribbon; others were multi-hued, all with matching bars.

"Too bad your mother isn't here to see them," said my father, Ernest Kukec.

He stopped and remembered. He then turned to me and admitted he also never received his medals from serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. Medals weren't always provided to veterans when they were discharged, he said.

"When you were discharged, you just wanted to go home and get on with your life," he said.

As years turned into decades, those medals were forgotten in the rush to earn their bread and butter and to raise families. Now those medallions of honor have become priceless as World War II servicemen and women dwindle in numbers.

Those 16 million who served, including my mother and father, were honored Saturday when the National World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington.

Today, we're honoring millions more who likely are revisiting a past filled with overseas battles or stateside duties. Opening that package of medals a few weeks ago had the same feel of revisiting the past for me.

But mine was filled with research...

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