Daughter receives medals Dad earned in WWII

Long-missing WWII medal awarded in LA
By ROBERT JABLON
Associated Press
Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2013

LOS ANGELES — Hyla Merin grew up without a father and for a long time never knew why.

Her mother never spoke about the Army officer who died before Hyla was born. The scraps of information she gathered from other relatives were hazy: 2nd Lt. Hyman Markel was a rabbi’s son, brilliant at mathematics, the brave winner of a Purple Heart who died sometime in 1945.

Aside from wedding photos of Markel in uniform, Merin never glimpsed him.

But on Sunday, decades after he won it, Merin received her father’s Purple Heart, along with a Silver Star she never knew he’d won and a half-dozen other medals.

Merin wiped away tears as the Silver Star was pinned to her lapel during a short ceremony attended by friends and family at her home in Westlake Village, a community straddling the Ventura and Los Angeles county lines. The other medals were presented on a plaque.
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