SEATTLE — Freed from the Dachau concentration camp at the end of World War II, Henry Schaloum’s parents were great fans of the American military. They came to the U.S. five years later and resolved to open an Army-Navy surplus store in Seattle.
Over the next decades, between 1955 and 1980, Schaloum’s father acquired four Medals of Honor — the nation’s highest military award. He never wanted to sell them, but solemnly displayed them in the shop, which Schaloum, himself a veteran, eventually took over.
As cherished as the medals were, the 65-year-old knew there was only one thing to do when he learned recently they were fakes. He gave them up Wednesday during a ceremony at the Seattle field office of the FBI, whose agents alerted him that those medals had never been awarded to any veteran.
“It’s an honor to do what I needed to do,” he said. “It never occurred to me to sell them. I know what they represent.”
The medals at issue had all been fabricated by the company that once had the government contract to produce Medals of Honor, Lordship Industries Inc. of Hauppage, N.Y. The company was eventually fined for selling hundreds of bootlegged medals.
There are 85 living Medal of Honor recipients. To help root out military medal imposters, Congress in 2005 passed the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a crime punishable by up to a year to buy, sell, wear or claim to have received an honor one never earned — a law struck down by a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said it violated the First Amendment by criminalizing lies that don’t necessarily harm anyone. The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday it would review that decision.
Seattle FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Steven Dean noted that had the medals from the store been stolen, someone might have wound up using them to pose as a Medal of Honor recipient, damaging the integrity of the award.
Retired Army Col. Bruce Crandall, originally from Olympia, received the Medal of honor for service in Vietnam. He accepted the fake medals from Schaloum, of Issaquah, on behalf of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and he said he expected them to be locked in a safe somewhere.
Each recipient of the honor is awarded two medals: one with the recipient’s name engraved on the back, and one that says “duplicate.” The medals from Schaloum’s shop, Federal Army-Navy Surplus in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, are blank.
“I really appreciate what you’ve done,” Crandall told Schaloum. “You were doing the right thing — displaying it, not trying to sell it.”
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