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Contribute to the record
Not one of the four service records has been recovered yet \u2014 three military, and one civilian, at the Department of State. If you can close a gap, the Foundation would like to hear from you.
What the Foundation is looking for
You knew them
Anyone who knew Aubrey Lee, Homer Buford or William Roger directly — and anyone who served alongside Anna Beth Hanes at the Department of State, in Germany, Barbados, Tunisia, or the Truman Building in Washington.
You hold a document
Discharge papers, orders, citations, letters home, or anything with a service number on it. A scan is as useful as the original, and the original stays with you.
You hold a photograph
Particularly anything in uniform, and particularly anything with a name, place or date written on the back.
You hold an artifact
A uniform, a medal, a sidearm, a footlocker. Talk to the Foundation before an estate sale, not after one.
Never alter an original document
Do not redact, mark, cut, cover or otherwise change a discharge paper or any other original. An altered document loses its value as evidence, and the damage cannot be undone. The Foundation needs these intact, exactly as they are. If a redacted copy is ever required for display, the Foundation makes it from a scan and never touches the original.
At the same time, do not email one either. A DD-214 and an Official Military Personnel File carry a Social Security number and a date of birth. Together those are enough to open credit in a person’s name, and for a deceased veteran they are enough for a long time before anybody notices. The same goes for posting one to a genealogy site, a photo service, or a family group chat.
So do neither. Leave the document exactly as it is, keep it somewhere dry and flat, and write using the form above. The Foundation will contact you and arrange an in-person acquisition to secure discharge papers, photographs and artifacts. Material travels in locked cases, and the Foundation will drive anywhere in the continental United States to collect it. Nothing of this kind is put in the post or attached to an email.