The Hearts That Bind: Medal Makers Feel Personal Tie to Soldiers' Sacrifice

Newhouse News Service ^ | Feb. 25, 2004 | DELIA M. RIOS

[SandRat]

TOMBALL, Texas -- The radio was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as it usually is, in a back finishing room of Graco Awards Inc., away from the heat of the furnace and the noise of the presses that forged the 24 karat gold plated hearts waiting that day on Brenda Hutton's worktable.

At the crest of each heart had been soldered a shield bearing George Washington's coat of arms. Oak leaves framing the shields had their green enamel coating. Purple backings were secured within the hearts.

One last step and the medal that more than any other stands for the soldier's sacrifice would be instantly recognizable. With music playing, working in a rhythm of 100 medals an hour, Hutton inserted gold profiles of Washington in his Continental Army uniform, about the length of a quarter, into each purple base.

Suddenly, people were crying. Others sat stunned. Some, distraught, left for home. "I stayed," Hutton remembers. She still had all those unfinished Purple Hearts.

"We Will Never Forget," reads a poster hanging now in that room, where the radio brought news of the terrorist attacks in New York, on the Pentagon, and on a plane lost over Pennsylvania. The deaths that day, followed by the wounded and dead out of Afghanistan and Iraq, are personal to the 60 workers at Graco Awards, ...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thank you very much!

[MEG33]

I am glad I found it again.