A World War II soldier from Virginia killed in action has been accounted for over 75 years later, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).
No matter where they are held, these National POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremonies share the common purpose of honoring those who were held captive and returned, as well as those who remain missing.
(
Catherine Mortensen) – To paraphrase Gen. Douglas MacArthur, I do not know the dignity of my great uncle’s birth, but I know the glory of his death. My great uncle Augustine Leonardi was born in Pueblo, Colorado on August 4, 1918, far from the battles raging in Europe during the First World War. His father was a first-generation immigrant from Austria who came to America in search of a better life and ended up owning a saloon in a mining town in northern New Mexico before moving his family to nearby Pueblo in search of better work after the mine closed.
Augustine, who was known as “Augie,” was the sixth of nine children. Augie’s father died when he was only six years old. When he was twelve, his mother passed, as well. For a time Augie and his siblings lived with their oldest brother in Trinidad, Colorado before eventually moving to Salt Lake City where they were raised by their maternal grandmother, the widow of a Civil War veteran from Massachusetts.