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Widow's persistence pays off with posthumous Purple Heart
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By Sean Smith
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Pensacola News Journal, August 9th, 2005
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Widow's persistence pays off with posthumous Purple Heart
Congressman awards medal 63 years later
Betty Austin received the Purple Heart on behalf of her deceased husband William E. Austin, who was wounded in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
SeanSmith@PensacolaNewsJournal.com
William E. Austin went to his grave without receiving the Purple Heart for wounds he suffered during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
But 27 years after his death, and 63 years after he was wounded, his wife, Betty Austin of Warrington, received congressional help for her husband’s posthumous cause.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Chumuckla, awarded Austin’s Purple Heart to the 73-year-old widow on Saturday during a ceremony conducted by the 350th Civil Affairs Command to honor troops who served in Iraq.
“This presentation was very important to the Austin family, but it was equally important to the soldiers of the 350th who had just returned from Iraq,” Miller said Monday. “It shows that no matter how much time passes, America never forgets the sacrifices that our men and women in uniform make to protect our freedom.”
William Austin, an enlisted Army sentry, was shot in the leg as a Japanese aircraft strafed the grounds outside the Army barracks on Dec. 7, 1941. He was hospitalized for 22 days, then went on to serve in campaigns in the Philippines and New Guinea.
He and his wife married in 1957, a year before he retired as a major. He died in 1978 at the age of 56.
“He never really complained about not getting it, but I wanted him to have it,” Austin’s widow said Monday of the Purple Heart.
She tried through Army channels for several years. Then she visited the offices of two of Miller’s congressional predecessors, but aides turned her away despite being shown copies of a telegraph to her husband’s mother about him being wounded and letters from his commander.
Last year, Austin told Miller about the missed medal. Within a few weeks, he verified eligibility with the Army.
Ray Funderburk, national spokesman for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, a veterans service organization for combat-wounded veterans, said it’s not unusual for decorations to be missed by the military. More than 5 million military men and women have been awarded the Purple Heart since World War II, he said.
“We get calls all the time, and we always refer them to their congressmen,” Funderburk said. “She went through all this trouble so this gentleman could have his Purple Heart. That is commendable.”
Austin, who volunteers as a security guard at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola Naval Air Station, will give the medal and certificate to their only child, William E. Austin II, 47, who also lives in Warrington.
“I wanted him to know the kind of man his father was and what he did for his country,” she said.
She plans to keep the smaller uniform-version of the decoration with her.
“This little Purple Heart is coming with me to my grave,” she said. “I want to bring it to him up in heaven and tell him, ‘Honey, I got it for you.’ ”
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