The 75th anniversary of D-Day made for an emotional journey for the south Alabama family members of Pvt. Stephen Novak, who was 28-years-old when he was critically injured storming Utah Beach and died days later on June 10, 1944.
WALA on Thursday reported that Novak’s original Purple Heart had been lost as it moved down the generations in his family. However, thanks to the diligence of his great niece, who lives in Daphne, a new Purple Heart has since been reissued, almost 75 years after he died.
Lani Kosick told WALA she began hunting down information related to Novak’s death after her grandfather (Novak’s brother) mentioned Novak dying during WWII and that his Purple Heart had since been misplaced.
“That’s something that’s always bothered him, something that [he felt] his brother’s legacy had been lost,” Kosick said. “And nobody really knew about the story and something he always kinda had bottled up.”
Kosick, with some help from a cousin, later learned the majority of Novak’s records had been destroyed in a fire.
However, all was not lost, and she eventually found what she needed: the original application for Novak’s military headstone.
“The document that was my saving grace, was the application for his military headstone, that said ‘killed-in-action,’ and that warranted a Purple Heart,” Kosick explained.
This past Christmas, Kosick surprised her grandfather, who had reportedly always looked up to his brother growing up, with a re-issued Purple Heart.
“He knew exactly, once he felt the box, he knew what it was, and it’s the first, the only time I’ve seen him so emotional and in tears,” Kosick shared.
She added that one of the more heartbreaking discoveries of her research was the thousands of American casualties whose legacies were lost in a massive Army records facility fire in the 1970’s.
“It made it real for me because I think our generation, we’re a step back from WWII, and we know it happened, we know it was tragic, but we don’t realize how tragic it really was,” Kosick emphasized.
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Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
