The black leather coat was soft and creased — dated not just by wear but by changing fashion.
Brett Buchheit, a Lakewood attorney spearheading a coat drive for his law firm, reached his hand inside an interior pocket and felt a poke on his palm. For days Buchheit had been pulling junk out of coat pockets — Jolly Ranchers and empty cigarette packs and used ski passes — before sending the coats off to the cleaners in preparation for distributing them to the needy.
Upon feeling the jab, his mind momentarily raced as he feared — inside this coat he imagined had last been worn to a Bon Jovi concert circa 1989 — something sinister might lurk. Instead, what he pulled out of the pocket of the cast-away coat was a testament to forgotten heroism.
Neatly wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag was a polished, unfrayed Bronze Star, one of the highest military honors a service member can receive. It is given for acts of bravery committed on the battlefield.
“You’ve got an obligation at this point,” Buchheit said Friday, recalling the words of a colleague he told about the find. “You can’t just ignore a Bronze Star.”
So Buchheit called a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, hoping someone there could help in locating the medal’s recipient or the recipient’s family.
On Monday — Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day — Buchheit and others working on the coat drive will give the Bronze Star to VFW Post 2461 Commander Bill Bourrillion during a ceremony at the post on South Broadway in Denver.
Bourrillion, himself a Bronze Star recipient from his service in Vietnam, acknowledges that finding the medal’s owner will be difficult but said he feels duty-bound to try.
“It’s an almost impossible task,” he said. “A Bronze Star is not engraved. It’s just a simple star with a ribbon.”
Bourrillion said he will spread the word about the medal among post members and members of other VFW posts, but said he also must watch out for impostors who might try to con the medal away. If all else fails, he said, the medal will stay at the post, safeguarded among people who know its significance.
“The Bronze Star is a recognition that someone did something in combat that was beyond the call of duty,” Bourrillion said. “I don’t want to see a Bronze Star end up in somebody’s trash bag or end up in some dump.”
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
