National nonprofit seeks to hear from Purple Heart recipients
By Kevin Spradlin
PeeDeePost.com
ROCKINGHAM — The Board of Commissioners on Monday proclaimed Richmond County a “Purple Heart County” to show solidarity with a state and national military veterans group.
Mike Stubbs, commander of the North Carolina chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, and four other members were on hand during the commissioners’ monthly public meeting to offer pins and literature on the organization and to garner the county’s support of the goal to get all of North Carolina’s 100 counties on board.
“We’re very proud to be here tonight,” Stubbs said. “We’re a very proud and unique group.”
Stubbs noted that the Military Order of the Purple Heart has the second smallest membership among military award recipients, second only to those who have earned the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The Purple Heart, earned when a member of the U.S. military is wounded in combat operations, is the nation’s oldest military decoration in use today.
Stubbs, who served in Vietnam, noted that “if you’ve ever been any place other than the U.S.A., you know what a great country this is.”
The commissioners asked how many Purple Heart recipients lived in Richmond County Stubbs said he didn’t know — and that was a problem.
“We hope, by this proclamation, that other Purple Heart veterans will come forward and be recognized,” Stubbs said. “North Carolina has the third largest military population in the nation” and is the only state that has a post for each of the four branches of the military.
Obtaining the names of Purple Heart recipients “is a priority,” Stubbs said. “We can’t get it. We have to have these veterans come forward … but we cannot get that information (from the government). It’s amazing to us that we can’t, being that we’re chartered by Congress.”
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