A Lawrence Vietnam veteran was glad to get a replacement for a medal lost in a fire.
The ribbon and metal of a Purple Heart can't undo the past.
They can't repair the damage to body and mind that left Gary Conner disabled.
Still, Conner, 52, said Friday morning that he was glad to get a replacement for the Purple Heart medal he lost in a house fire at his mother's house several years ago.
The replacement medal was given to him outside the Bourgeois Pig by U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
"He's a real patriot," Brownback said of Conner.
The medal was earned Dec. 16, 1968, in Vietnam, when Conner was a Marine.
"I was out in the jungle up in the mountains," Conner said. "They ambushed us while we were crossing a river."
Conner and two other men were "walking point" for their squad when the firing began.
"They shot the two other guys in the leg," Conner said. "They shot me in the chest."
The bullet went in the right side of Conner's chest and lodged in his arm.
"Big clumps of blood were coming out of my mouth," Conner said. "I couldn't do anything."
Conner spent the next few moments waiting for the firing to stop. He has spent the days, years and now decades since trying to heal.
He was unconscious at a Da Nang hospital for eight days before he awakened and was awarded the Purple Heart -- a medal given to combat-wounded members of the U.S. armed forces -- by a general. Conner spent six months in a Guam hospital. Doctors removed the bullet from his arm a year later.
Conner is on 100 percent disability because of the physical wound and because of post traumatic stress disorder.
"They didn't have to give me a medal," Conner said. "I just figured I was doing what I was supposed to be doing over there."
But Conner was sorry to have lost the medal in the fire, and he told a member of Brownback's staff whom he knew.
Brownback arranged the replacement.
"Senators do things like that," Conner said.
Despite the meaning of the event, Friday's presentation was informal, with the location chosen by Conner.
"I figured I was going to have coffee anyway," he said.
-- Kendrick Blackwood's phone message number is 832-7221. His e-mail address is kblackwood@ljworld.com.
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