State Treasurer Roby Smith hosted an event today to return an Iowan’s Purple Heart his closest living relative. Smith says the Purple Heart was found in a safety deposit box a bank turned over to his office as unclaimed property.

“It took a lot of homework, but we finally tracked it down,” Smith said. “We had been in possession of this for several years.”

Garold Hayes of Tama died in 2015 and the safety deposit box was his. Nancy Clark, his cousin, accepted the medal on behalf of the Hayes family.

“I was around him quite a bit when we were kids, but I lost contact with him. I thought he was younger than me,” she said. “He was a cute little boy, but we were the same age, but I think he was sheltered because his mother had a child that died just before he was born, so he was a good cousin.”

It’s unclear who the Purple Heart was awarded to because there was no paperwork in the safety deposit box where it was found. According to the obituary for Garold Hayes, he spent most of his life in Tama and was buried in a cemetery in Pleasantville, where he was born.

The state treasurer said his office has another Purple Heart in its possession and would like to return the medal to a relative. “Herman Eggers of Waterloo is who it was awarded to and so if there’s a way we can help find the next of kin for that, we sure would appreciate it,” Smith said.

Papers found with the Purple Heart indicate Eggers served in the Korean War. According to a brief online obituary, Eggers died in a Waterloo nursing home in 2020 at the age of 91 and had formerly lived in Charles City.

(This post was updated at 2:04 p.m. after receiving new information from the state treasurer’s office.)

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