In the hard-fought campaign to liberate the Philippines during World War II, 22-year-old Army Cpl. Henry Van Der Noord of suburban Lansing was hit with shrapnel during a key battle on the island of Luzon.
Van Der Noord survived — as did three brothers who also served their country in the war — and earned a Purple Heart for the combat injury he suffered in May 1945.
This month, as Memorial Day approached, Van Der Noord’s firstborn grandchild Chris Reed held the heart-shaped medal for the first time in about 25 years after Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs presented it to him during a poignant ceremony in Atlanta.
Frerichs’ office had preserved the medal in a government vault since 2020, when a Geneva bank turned it over to the state from an abandoned safe deposit box. Reed told the Tribune he had lost track of the box during his frequent moves while serving in the U.S. Air Force.
Reed, who now lives outside Atlanta, said his grandfather had given him the medal in the 1970s when he was 8 or 9 years old. He smiled as Frerichs opened a small weathered case to reveal not only his grandfather’s medal but also the pencil markings that Reed, as a young boy, had scribbled inside the lid.
“It was a cool box, but I had no idea (at the time) what it really meant,” said Reed, 57, who came to realize the medal’s significance as he grew older and through his own military service.
“I never really put two and two together (back then) about what he endured,” he said. “He did almost (make) the ultimate sacrifice.”
The Illinois treasurer is the state’s custodian of unclaimed property, which includes everything from lost bank accounts and insurance policies to stamps, coins, jewelry and military medals.
The treasurer’s office has returned an estimated $2.2 billion in forgotten cash and stock to individuals, employers and nonprofits during Frerichs’ three terms, according to the office. The treasurer launched a special effort, “Operation Purple Heart,” in late 2021 to raise awareness about the unclaimed medals.
To date, Frerichs has returned 13 Purple Hearts, including the most recent medal belonging to Van Der Noord, presented to Reed on May 4.
Last winter, the Tribune wrote about its own efforts to identify the veterans behind the remaining unclaimed Purple Hearts. After months of researching public records and interviewing people linked to the safe deposit boxes, the Tribune succeeded in 10 of the 11 cases on the treasurer’s public list.
At the time, Van Der Noord’s medal was not included on that list. Members of the office reached out to Reed earlier this year after tracking him down near Atlanta.
The treasurer’s office has been working to verify the claims of families who have come forward following the Tribune’s reporting, officials said.
Henry Van Der Noord died Feb. 3, 1991, at the age of 68. A retired Lansing police lieutenant, he last lived in the small Kankakee County city of Momence, about 50 miles south of Chicago, where Reed said his grandfather loved to spend his days on the river in his fishing boat.
Reed, who was in his early 20s when his grandfather died, said Van Der Noord didn’t speak much about the war.
“He was very humble about it,” he said.
Reed said his grandfather, one of eight children, earned the nickname “Babe” within the family because he was an infant when they arrived in the United States from the Netherlands. The moniker stuck, even after he went off to war.
He was in the Army’s 38th Field Artillery Division and traveled to Hawaii, New Guinea and the Philippines during his estimated two years of service, according to his family and public records.
During a lengthy recuperation from the shrapnel wound he suffered May 3, 1945, he ended up in the same hospital as one of his older brothers, Pfc. Edward Van Der Noord, of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, who had injured his ankle in a parachute jump, according to the treasurer’s office.
Henry Van Der Noord retired from the Lansing Police Department in 1978 with the rank of lieutenant, according to the department. He had three daughters with his first wife, Nellie, who died of breast cancer in the mid-1970s, and later remarried.
Reed said his grandfather also worked with Edward Van Der Noord building duplexes as well as a large complex in Lansing during the 1970s that bore the family name, the Van Der Noord Apartments.
“He was a man’s man, for sure,” Reed said of the grandfather who taught him how to swim by tossing him into a pool, much to the chagrin of his mother. “He was always kind of a carpenter and a hard worker.”
Reed recalled seeing his grandfather’s large scar on his back, but Van Der Noord didn’t offer too many details.
“He would touch on it briefly and then my mom would give the rest of the story,” Reed said.
Though he shielded his family from the atrocities he experienced at war, Reed knew what Van Der Noord’s service meant to him. In fact, he was so patriotic and such a big fan of Gen. Douglas MacArthur that his grandfather offered his mother and father $1,000 in 1967 to name him “Douglas,” Reed said. They declined, but Reed noted one of his aunts did take her dad up on the offer.
Chris Reed left Illinois in his late teens, enlisting in the Air Force and moving around the country during his estimated 20 years of service, split between active duty and the reserves. He had put the Purple Heart in a bank deposit box for safekeeping, last seeing it circa 1995-2000.
Reed said he was honored when Frerichs’ staff came to Georgia to return his grandfather’s medal. Truth be told, he’s also relieved he didn’t have to tell his mother he had misplaced it.
Anyone with information about a Purple Heart return, particularly a safe deposit box connected to Robert Cawthon, is urged to contact the Illinois treasurer’s office at claimantconnect@illinoistreasurer.gov. For more information, visit operationpurpleheart.org
cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com
