80 Years Late, He Got His Medals
George Klein enlisted in the Navy at 15, right after Pearl Harbor, and served in the Pacific through WWII's worst fighting — but came home to find he'd never been given the medals he earned. Eighty years later, at age 100, his family tracked down their congressman to finally make it right.
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George Klein was fifteen years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Last month, at the age of 100, he finally got the five medals the Navy owed him — eighty years late.
His best friend from high school never got to grow old at all.
Klein and that friend enlisted together straight out of Bishop Neumann High School. Klein went Navy. His friend went Marines, and was killed fighting at Iwo Jima. Klein shipped out on March 1st, 1944, and served as a Radioman Third Class with the Navy's 7th Amphibious Force, carrying messages through the Pacific Theater during some of the war's fiercest fighting. In 1946, he was honorably discharged and sent home — but somewhere in the paperwork of a war that had just processed millions of servicemen home at once, nobody ever handed him the medals he'd earned.
So Klein did what a lot of that generation did. He didn't chase it. He married his high school sweetheart, Corinne, raised four sons, built a career in management and sales, and in 1992 was ordained a Catholic deacon — spending years afterward visiting nursing homes to sit with the sick and the elderly. Eighty years went by.
It was Klein's own kids who finally asked to see the medals. When the family realized they didn't exist — that they'd simply never been issued — they reached out to their congressman, Tim Kennedy, and asked for help. Last month, in a ceremony in Williamsville, New York, it finally happened.
Klein received the World War Two Victory Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the Honorable Discharge Button, and the Philippine Liberation Medal — presented by Congressman Tim Kennedy, in front of his wife, his children, his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren. A Red Cross representative presented him a coin and a hat. The Western New York chapter of Quilts of Valor wrapped him in a handmade quilt, one of more than 500 that group has given to veterans in that region alone.
Klein got choked up giving his remarks. "This medal is not mine alone," he said. "It belongs to the men and women who served beside me during World War II. Many returned home and built lives with their families. Others made the ultimate sacrifice and never had the opportunity to grow old."
His great-grandson, Carter Sablinski, put it simply: "To me, you're not just a veteran, you are a hero. You have shown our family what it means to be strong, kind, and proud to serve others."
Here's the thing about a debt like this one: it doesn't expire. Eighty years is a long time to wait for five small pieces of metal — but it's not too long for a country, or a family, to finally say thank you.
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