{"id":30551,"date":"2012-06-27T19:41:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T23:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=30551"},"modified":"2012-06-27T19:41:58","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T23:41:58","slug":"montford-point-marines-awarded-congressional-gold-medals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30551","title":{"rendered":"Montford Point Marines awarded Congressional Gold Medals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>370 Marine veterans trooped to DC today for the presentation to them of the highest civilian honor &#8211; the Congressional Gold Medal. They were all black and they were the first Marines. All had attended segregated basic training at Montford Point, NC between 1942 and 1949, for that, they call themselves <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montfordpointmarines.com\/\">Montford Point Marines<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Richard sends us a link from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/military\/story\/2012-06-27\/montford-point-marines-congressional-gold-medal\/55873212\/1\">USAToday<\/a> which reports on the event today.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I hate to use the word overdue \u2026 but it&#8217;s time,&#8221; said Yoder Faulkner, 81, of Detroit, who was raised in Winston-Salem, N.C., and trained at Montford Point before serving in Korea. &#8220;A lot of men died not knowing \u2026 as though it just didn&#8217;t matter, you know?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As the ceremony got under way, the pride \u2014 and the respect for the Montford Point Marines \u2014 was evident. Smiles brightened wrinkled faces; backs straightened, and chests went out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never expected that America would, quote, &#8216;evolve&#8217; this way,&#8221; said Riley Ford, 81, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., who also trained at Montford Point before going to Korea. &#8220;I never expected America would evolve to this point in my lifetime.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Welcome home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>370 Marine veterans trooped to DC today for the presentation to them of the highest civilian &hellip; <a title=\"Montford Point Marines awarded Congressional Gold Medals\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30551\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Montford Point Marines awarded Congressional Gold Medals<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}