Missouri family reunited with father’s Bronze Star decades after Vietnam War

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kelley Maddox’s recollections of her father’s time within the U.S. Military through the Vietnam Warfare are nonetheless vivid a number of a long time later.

“He was affected by his time in Vietnam,” Maddox stated. “So many individuals sacrificed their lives, and for those who made it again, after they received again they weren’t handled as heroes.”

Her father, Rick Dovell, was born in Missouri and grew up on a farm.

He was a tough employee and in addition a soldier — a distant a part of his life that his daughter needs she knew extra about.

“He was positively in a fight zone,” she stated. “He was very pleased with his time there, I feel, as he received older, however he positively didn’t discuss it sufficient.”

Dovell hung out on the American Legion, the place Maddox says he would reveal glimpses about his service.

When Dovell handed away in 2017, his daughter knew he had unclaimed property on the Missouri State Treasurer’s Workplace however had no concept what it was.

An announcement of unclaimed property from the workplace caught the eye of KSHB 41 I-Workforce producer Lisa McCormick, who labored to attach the dots.

“It wasn’t till Lisa informed me that it was an precise medal that I knew that that’s what it was,” Maddox stated.

She had no concept that her father had even earned a Bronze Star, which requires partly “heroic or meritorious achievement or service.”

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“It was positively a pleasant shock for positive,” she stated.

Dovell’s Bronze Star was one among greater than 100 army medals sitting within the vault room on the Missouri State Treasurer’s Workplace.

It’s a trove of service, sacrifice and recollections unclaimed.

Purple Hearts. Medals from World Warfare I and World Warfare II. A diary believed to be from a Civil Warfare soldier describing President Abraham Lincoln coming to see the troops.

In December, then-State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick took KSHB 41 Information Anchor Lindsay Shively into the vault room the place these medals and all the opposite unclaimed property is saved. It is a assortment that retains rising.

Fitzpatrick stated army medals, insignia and different property that lands within the vault room come from protected deposit bins left behind.

Usually officers public sale off what does not get claimed after about 5 years. Even at auctions, a few of the objects by no means discover a new residence.

Getting her father’s Bronze Star, Maddox wrote again to the Treasurer’s Workplace, partly, “… My father’s sacrifice to the US being drafted in his youth was not in useless…”

“I imply, it’s impactful,” she stated. “Twenty-two years previous, not being given a selection. That’s powerful. I can’t think about.”

Now she hopes to search out out extra about why he earned that Bronze Star within the first place.

“I feel he’d be comfortable,” Maddox stated when requested what her father would suppose, figuring out she has his Bronze Star. “I feel that he would have informed the story of it for positive. However I’m sure that he’s comfortable that it’s lastly the place it must be. “

Maddox says the recovered medal has sparked conversations along with her kids about their grandfather and his army service.

Yow will discover the part particularly for army unclaimed property on the Missouri State Treasurer’s Workplace web site and phone them in the event you imagine you possibly can declare one thing.

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