Life-changing responsibility comes with Medal of Honor

Life-changing responsibility comes with MoH
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Nov 29, 2010 5:26:16 EST
Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta’s life has changed forever, said retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady. He should know. Like Giunta, Brady also earned the Medal of Honor.

Retired Col. Roger Donlon agrees. He, too, earned the country’s highest military honor. It literally changed his life: Donlon even attributes the medal to helping him find his wife of 42 years.

“When she saw me in that picture in the paper, she told herself that she has to meet this gentleman. That’s what started it, unbeknownst to me,” said Donlon, who met his wife, Norma, after the two happened to sit next to each other on a plane.


Life as a regular soldier in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team ended for Giunta on Nov. 16, when President Obama draped the Medal of Honor around Giunta’s neck. He earned it for his heroics in a brutal firefight in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley on Oct. 25, 2007.

Entry into the Congressional Medal of Honor Society isn’t always what it might seem, said three living recipients of the medal.

“We always say it’s tougher to wear the medal than to earn it,” said Brady, who earned his in the Vietnam War after piloting a UH-1 Huey and rescuing 51 wounded soldiers surrounded by North Vietnamese soldiers on Jan. 6, 1968.

Peter Lemon, also a living recipient, avoided the attention altogether for 13 years by putting his medal away. “I went about my life as normal, worked, went to college, went into business because I put the award in a shoebox in the closet,” Lemon said.

Lemon earned his medal as he fought off a 400-man assault alongside his 18-man platoon at a fire base in Vietnam’s Tay Ninh province on April 1, 1970. He shunned the award, saying he was only one of 18 and they deserved it, especially three soldiers who died, just as much as he did.

Forty years later he said wearing the Medal of Honor is a responsibility — not a choice — and the responsibility is weighty. “The Medal of Honor as a symbol can sometimes be larger than you are as an individual,” he said.
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Life-changing responsibility comes with MOH