One local family has had precious heirlooms returned to them after one resident found military medals that had been accidentally discarded in a dumpster.
Brian Newberry and his son-in-law Lonnie Platz, a pastor for the Life Church, have been making regular visits to a homeless camp for a while. Newberry says they bring out soup, sandwiches, clothing, firewood, and friendship several times a month.
On one of their visits, Newberry was chatting with some of the residents. One man, Wayne Meronawich, told him that he had something he wanted him to see. He showed Newberry a box of WW2 service medals that he’d found in one of the dumpsters.
“I said, ‘This is really cool. Where did you find this?,’” says Newberry.
Meronawich told Newberry how he found the medals and when Newberry inquired what he wanted to do with the medals, Meronawich told him he wanted to return them to the family.
Newberry, who is also a member of the Legion, told Meronawich that he would see if anyone knew anything about the medals.
Finding the veteran who had earned those medals was made easier thanks to the efforts of volunteers at the Legion. Newberry says they’d been working on a project to digitize the pictures they had of the veterans. They took a look at the slideshow and found Chester Jenzen, who had had a picture taken, but didn’t have any medals on his uniform.
“He’s got quite a few distinguished medals,” says Newberry.
He asked the Legion if they would be interested in accepting the medals from Meronawich. However, he found out that Jenzen was the uncle of local resident Donna Hutchinson.
“They got thrown out by accident because they were cleaning out the basement of their house,” says Newberry.
He says Hutchinson was really touched by Meronawich’s efforts to find the family the medals belonged to, going so far as to give him a card with some money in it.
Newberry says that he believes that God had a hand in the situation. “It was just a beautiful thing that happened… and I thought this really needs to be shared with the community.”
He says while there are a few individuals that cast a shadow over the reputation of the homeless community, this story shows that they can’t all be painted with the same brush. He hopes that people will see the story and recognize that many in the homeless population care about the people in their community, too
