State returns medals to soldier's daughter

A Memphis, Tenn., woman saw her deceased father's Purple Heart and Bronze Star medals he received in the U.S. Army for the first time Friday, after the state auditor's office tracked her down.

"It is breathtaking," said Angela Allen, a 40-year-old occupational therapist.

Her father, Earnest Johnson, who died in March 2004, served two tours in Vietnam, she said.

Allen also received her father's good conduct, national defense and Vietnam service medals, his dog tags and his coin collection Friday from the state auditor's office.

She said she thought her father might have lost these medals when he left West Helena, where he lived for a few years before moving to Memphis for the last eight years of his life.

Allen said she "was shocked" to get a call from the state auditor's office about two months ago about their discovery.

"I had no idea where they were," she said. "I have never seen them."

"We talked about [them], but a lot of things happened [in Vietnam] I guess he never really wanted to talk about," Allen said.

Along with about 3,000 other unclaimed properties from safe deposit boxes, the medals and coins had been in the state auditor's vault in the Victory Building east of the state Capitol, said Donnally Davis, media coordinator for Republican state Auditor Andrea Lea of Russellville.

The medals and coins were in a safe deposit box the state auditor's office received in 2011 from a bank in Helena-West Helena, said Lauren Brewer, the office's property controller.

A bank can keep a safe deposit box's contents for five years without receiving payment for the safe deposit box before mailing the contents to the state auditor's office, which tries to find the owners of the property, Lea said. "So if you have a safe deposit box, tell your relatives. If something happens, they will know," she said.

Brewer said she's "an airman in the Air Force Reserve, so when I found a Purple Heart medal and Bronze Star, it was especially important to me that they get back to the rightful family rather than sit in a box in a vault waiting on someone to just happen upon it."

Brewer started working in the state auditor's office in January and is the daughter of former state Rep. Ann Clemmer, R-Benton, who is senior associate director for the state Department of Higher Education.

Lea said Brewer approached her with a plastic storage bag a few weeks after she took office in January and told her that "a bunch of medals are in this bag and this is not OK."

So Lea said she told Brewer that she should spend the next couple of weeks "doing nothing but working on this."

Brewer said it took some detective work to track down the owner.

"If someone bleeds for our country, their property should be handled even more carefully and with some dignity [rather] than to be dumped in a bag," Brewer said.

For now, Allen said she plans to put her father's medals and coins in a safe deposit box.

"Putting them in a safe place," she said.

NW News on 04/25/2015

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