Veterans increasingly seek unclaimed medals from records center

ST. LOUIS -- When his time in the U.S. Navy came to an end, John E. Clark Sr. didn't wait around for his Distinguished Flying Cross. He just wanted to get home.

"My most exciting time in the Navy was when they handed me those discharge papers," said Clark, a veteran of World War II.

But 57 years later, pushed by his son, Clark claimed the medal he earned as part of a crew that destroyed a Japanese warship in the Philippine Sea.

In doing so, he joined a growing number of veterans, especially from World War II, who are only now seeking their service medals.

"There definitely has been an upswing," Ron Hindman, director of the National Personnel Records Center in suburban Overland, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Thousands of veterans are making the requests. It may be leveling off at a high level these past two or three years. We may be at the peak right now."

50,000 requests

In recent years, the center, which houses millions of personnel, health and medical records of discharged armed services members, has processed about 50,000 requests for medals annually. The requests make up between 5 percent and 10 percent of the center's total workload.

Experts like Jerry Cooper, a professor of military history at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, said the trend might be explained by the recent focus placed on the history of World War II, especially by books written by journalist Tom Brokaw and historian Stephen Ambrose.

"I find it fascinating that this taciturn generation now wants to talk about it, after seeing books like Ambrose's and Brokaw's, that they were part of something significant," Cooper said.

Clark's son, Ed Clark Jr., who runs the investment company his parents started in Collinsville, Ill., wanted his father to get the medal and pushed him to seek out the decoration. "With all of the stuff that's going on in the world, we felt it was time that he be recognized, not only for the people still alive but for those who didn't come back," Clark Jr. said. "He didn't want to talk about it, but we kept prying more and more."

While helping rebuild his roof following a hailstorm last summer, neighbors of Vietnam veteran Thomas Schopp, 51, of Florissant, encouraged him to claim a Bronze Star he earned during a firefight in 1968.

"I tell you when it occurred to me is when I got older and all these people did this for me," Schopp said, referring to the help he got with the roof. "I thought, 'I deserve it and I'm getting older."'