Purple Heart from WWI vet returned to soldier's family

FREMONT - Nearly a century after being wounded overseas in battle during World War I, one veteran’s Purple Heart medal was returned to his family Saturday.

Having been drafted the year before, Carl I. Bond, of Cambridge, Ohio, was fighting in Muesse-Argonne, France, when he was severely injured by a landmine in October 1918.

Discharged the following year, Bond returned to Cambridge and would later be rewarded a Purple Heart for his sacrifice and service. Bond died in Cambridge, age 82, in 1978.

While some of the Bond family remains in Cambridge, others would go on to settle in Fremont.

At some point, Bond’s Purple Heart was lost, along with his other medals, a piece of shrapnel from the blast, even his wallet with French currency still inside and more, unknown to much of his family.

Thanks to the tireless volunteer efforts of U.S. Army Maj. Zachariah Fike and the Purple Hearts Reunited organization, when someone stumbled upon Bond’s medals in a Florida storage unit rummage sale, the nonprofit set out on a mission to return those pieces of the family’s history to their rightful owners.

Old-fashioned detective work — with the help of modern technology and social media — led Fike to the Bond family in Fremont.

Erica Bond, Carl’s great-granddaughter, took the first call from Fike and promptly informed her father, Jeff Bond, Carl’s grandson from Fremont. He did not even know his grandfather once had a Purple Heart nor that he kept the shrapnel and other heirlooms from the war.

“We knew we had a hero in our family,” Bond said. “We were always so proud of him, but we just didn’t know that there was something out there more than just us knowing the story.”

Fike presented the medals and the late soldier’s other items to many members of the Bond family, who came in not only from Fremont but Cambridge as well, with a ceremony held at Hayes Presidential Library & Museums on Saturday.

To this day, Bond said the family is not exactly sure how the items ended up at a rummage sale, but he is not going to let it happen again.

“It’s such an honor,” he said with tears in his eyes. “This will never leave the family again.”

Fike, a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient himself, has a full-time job in the U.S. Army, but in his free time he leads Purple Heart Reunited, which he founded in 2012, and their efforts to recover military medals and have them returned home.

The organization has since successfully returned more than 200 medals to the veterans who earned them or their families completely free of charge. More than 300 more medals obtained by Purple Heart Reunited are in the process of finding their way home.

“We feel it’s important to educate the community on why the Purple Heart is so special and give a lot of these families a moment they’ve never received,” Fike said. “We’re here to celebrate a hero. Carl Bond was a hero. He went off to war, he fought for our country, he laid down his blood and he is a hero.”

“Knowing my family fought for our freedom we live with every day is something special,” Jeff Bond said.

jstinchcom@gannett.com

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Twitter: @JonDBN