LIMA, OH (WLIO) - Not all of our bravest military members were honored during their time in service, but the U.S. is working towards making sure that those left behind still get recognized.
This month's speaker at the Allen County Museum was Larry Huffman, a member of the museum's board of trustees and an expert on Medals of Honor, the highest decoration in our armed forces.
The lecture focused on how minority service members that were overlooked in the past are now being reviewed and retroactively awarded their Medal of Honor, either directly, or the award is presented to living relatives.
Normally a Medal of Honor is awarded soon after a noble act in battle, but many deserving soldiers were never recommended because of the prejudice of their superiors.
"Instead of that process that should have happened from the beginning and for one reason or another, they are reviewing them backwards to forwards and saying, well it should have been recommended and gone up, and so they do that to correct some serious inequity. And that was the big inequity, was World War I and World War II, if you come up with zero black recipients to the Medal of Honor for those two, that doesn't wash," Huffman explained.
Huffman also is also responsible for helping organize the museum's exhibit on the Medal of Honor, which features two recipients from Lima.
