{"id":75583,"date":"2017-10-26T09:30:55","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T13:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=75583"},"modified":"2022-01-23T22:47:24","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T03:47:24","slug":"stolen-valor-the-victimless-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=75583","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Valor; the victimless crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times Magazine publishes a letter from a daughter, entitled “Should I Reveal That My Dad Pretended to Be a Vietnam Vet?<\/a>“. The daughter tells the story of her father who had everyone in the family convinced that he was a wounded Vietnam veteran;<\/p>\n

I was with my father when he purchased a Purple Heart medal at an antiques fair. He explained that he had lost his, that it was possibly with his first wife. Although I thought it was odd he wouldn\u2019t simply ask for it back, I was a young person who trusted her father, and I didn\u2019t press him.<\/p>\n

As he was making plans for the end of his life, he instructed my stepmother not to include his veteran status in his obituary. She honored his wish, though she didn\u2019t understand why. After he died, she wanted to know more about his military service and details about where he had served, in the event that she was entitled to survivor benefits. She sent away for his records and received back his DD Form 214 (Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty) showing that he had been honorably discharged in 1968 for being medically unsuitable for duty before he even finished basic training. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We’ve seen this same scenario play out hundreds of times in the years that we’ve been in the stolen valor business. We’ve had to force family members remove their undeserving dearly departed from veteran cemeteries, we’ve had to force altered headstones when inaccuracies were involved. I remember when I called one of our partners once, he had just got off the phone with a widow who discovered that her recently-deceased husband wasn’t eligible for interment in a veteran cemetery.<\/p>\n

I had the daughter of a friend who joined the Marine Corps and she recalled the stories that her father had told her of his derring-do as a Marine, so she asked us to get his FOIA for her. She discovered that he had never earned the Navy Cross or Purple Heart he had claimed – he had never heard a shot fired in anger. She had suspected, but the verification that he had lied crushed her and drove her further from her father’s arms.<\/p>\n

The NYT advice columnist responds in part;<\/p>\n

Hard as this would have been, it would have been better if you\u2019d taken up your suspicions with your father while he was around to explain himself. He could have apologized; you could have forgiven him.<\/p>\n

Should you reveal the truth now? Just as truthfulness matters in relationships with the living, understanding important moral facts about the dead is valuable as well. People who were close to him and have a memory to hold on to will be in this respect better off if you tell them the facts. Some will also, no doubt, be upset. (Your sister may remain in denial.) But that\u2019s part of the proper emotional response to other people\u2019s behavior. Not everything that feels bad is bad: Some pain is worth it.<\/p>\n

And no, you don\u2019t owe it to your father to treat this as \u201cwater under the bridge.\u201d The dead can have an interest in our respecting their privacy. But he isn\u2019t entitled to have his reputation protected after his death, because he was never entitled to that protection in the first place. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a lot to be said about correcting the historical record. To all of the valor thieves out there who lurk on these pages; fix your lies, especially with your families. You really don’t want their last memory of you to be a liar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times Magazine publishes a letter from a daughter, entitled “Should I Reveal That … Stolen Valor; the victimless crime<\/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":[30,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75583","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=75583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}