A container of World War II medals finds its way home

By MARK MILLER

The trail of how a container filled with World War II medals came back into the possession of the recipient’s grandson goes from (from left) Troy Zook who found them at the Tonner Transfer station south of Bluffton, to Yvonne Clark, office administrator at the Wells County Veterans Service Office, to retired teacher Sue Harris, to Mike Moriarity, who had been looking for the lost medals. In addition to the medals awarded his grandfather, Howard Adney, the container includes a number of other military insignias. “I know exactly who gave those to him,” Moriarity says, “one of his best friends.” (Photos by Mark Miller)

Mike Moriarity knew his grandfather saw combat during World War II. He knew he was awarded a number of medals and honors, but he didn’t know whether they still existed.

“I began really looking for them about five years ago,” he said, when a flag that his grandfather had brought home came into his possession when his mother died. “Mom only knew that it had flown over his base, but we didn’t know what base that was.”

Moriarity had his grandfather’s discharge paperwork, along with a few newspaper clippings and his grandfather’s military driver’s license from the time he was stationed at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, prior to being shipped out to the Pacific theater. So he knew that he had been a Private First Class in Company G, 152nd Infantry Regiment. 

Mike Moriarity displays the medals awarded his grandfather, Howard Adney, that were recently found. “I’ve been looking for these for about five years,” he says.

He also had a list of the awards, including a Purple Heart with one oak leaf cluster, meaning he’d been wounded twice. He just didn’t have the medals.

“He would never talk about the war,” Moriarity said. His grandfather went to all of his basketball games at Southern Wells; the two were close.

“I did get him to talk about it just a little bit once,” he shared. “I remember asking him, ‘Grandpa, did you shoot anyone?’ He got real quiet, and teared up and just walked away.”

Moriarity has some ideas about what might have happened to the medals but declined to share the details. He kept asking other family members when he could about the medals but no one seemed to know.

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Howard Adney of Hartford City was inducted into the U.S. Army April 19, 1941. After infantry training in Mississippi, his company was deployed to the Pacific Theater where the 152nd Infantry was involved in heavy fighting to retake the Philippine Islands, specifically the Bataan Peninsula.

The medals and other insignias, including two military hats found at Tonner Transfer. Mike Moriarity believes one of the hats belonged to his grandfather and the other to one of his friends. Also shown in is his grandfather’s discharge certificate, which he has had for several years.

Adney was discharged from the Army Sept. 10, 1945, at Camp Atterbury in southern Indiana with the several awards: Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with three Bronze Stars, Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one Bronze Star, Purple Heart with one oak leaf cluster, a Combat Infantryman badge and a World War II Victory Medal.


Howard Adney was an infantryman in Company G, 152nd Infantry Regiment that saw action on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippine Islands. (Photo provided)

Adney returned to Hartford City where he worked and eventually retired as a welder at Overhead Door. He died in 1994. Adney’s daughter Sharon married Howard Moriarity and moved to southern Wells County. Their son Mike graduated from Southern Wells in 1987.

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As part of his duties at the Tonner Transfer station south of Bluffton, Troy Zook performs a quick overview of the contents of the trash that arrives at the facility before it is taken to an area landfill. One of the services that Tonner offers is providing a dumpster for people to fill and then picking it up.

“So we deliver dumpsters to an address, someone — the family maybe or someone else — usually empties out a house or apartment after someone has died or moved away,” Zook explained. “We rarely know much of the story. We just pick it up when they say it’s ready.”

He added that these dumpsters come in filled “with everything you can imagine. Furniture of course, pots and pans and kitchen stuff. Old clothes.”

He has found two saxophones in like-new condition and a number of antique metal Tonka truck toys.

“You name it, I’ve seen it.” he said.

Zook is looking for materials that cannot go to landfills. “I keep an eye out for containers,” he said. “Bleach, old paint. Any chemicals. These things have to be disposed of properly.”

One day in early August, he came across a package in one of the dumpsters — a plastic Tupperware-like container.

“I looked inside and you know what? I about passed out,” he continued. It contained a number of military medals and insignias, including two uniform hats, all very apparent to be of World War II vintage.

“I knew I didn’t want to throw this away but I also didn’t know what to do with it,” he said. So he put it aside and went back to work. “But of course, I kept thinking about it,” he continued. “My son-in-law, Kyle Morphew, is a veteran so I asked him what he thought. He is the one who suggested I take it to the veterans service office in town and even volunteered to do just that.”

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Wells County Veterans Services Officer Dewey Randall confirmed that a clear plastic container with a number of World War II medals and two service hats were brought to his office “by a young man from Tonner Transfer, but I didn’t get his name,” he said. 

Dewey and his office administrator, Yvonne Clark, examined the contents and found the name of Howard Adney faintly printed on a small piece of paper. Clark cross-referenced the name with a listing of Wells County veterans that Sue Harris has compiled. Harris’ research and work to continue to honor local veterans has been the subject of several News-Banner articles.

“I thought maybe Sue might be able to locate the family,” Clark said.

Harris was indeed up to the challenge.

“I had his obituary because he was on my list of Wells County veterans,” Harris said. Hence, she knew that there had been two daughters in the area, but one had died — Sharon — and the other is now in a nursing home in Jasper. “But Sharon Moriarity had two sons and I discovered Mike was still living in Wells County.”

Someone told her that he used to work at a local feed mill. She next went there and asked around for any information about Mike Moriarity and eventually was able to determine that he now works for Cornerstone Ag and got his phone number.

Moriarity gets emotional when he recalls getting that phone call from Harris.

“Yes, I teared up,” he said. “I’d been looking for these for about five years and had pretty much given up. I didn’t think I’d ever see them.” His daughter, who has been working on the family genealogy, “is thrilled too,” he said. “I am so grateful to everyone involved. I can’t thank Sue enough for finding me.”

“I don’t know how she did it,” Randall said, “but good for her and kudos to the Tonner folks who thought the medals were too precious to just toss aside.”

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Harris said she will have to adjust her records to note that Adney was not a Wells County veteran. “I’m wondering now how he got on my Wells County list,” she said.

Moriarity suspects that his mother Sharon submitted her father’s name to Harris after reading about her efforts to accumulate a list of all local veterans.

“Mom was very proud of her dad,” he said, adding that of course, he always has been as well. “I’m sure she wanted to make sure he was honored.”

miller@news-banner.com

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