WWI soldier’s family receives medals on his behalf over century after service

By Grant Stephens

Click here for updates on this story

    KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KSHB) — A Kansas City family is honoring the legacy of their relative who served in World War I.

Thomas Francis Keaton was never issued his earned medals after he was killed in combat.

After discovering that nearly a century later, his family spent months and months working to recover the records of his legacy.

“I can’t remember when I was first told about him,” said Keaton’s great-great grandchild Kyle Reeves. “But I was a boy, and he’s basically lived in me in my thoughts and my imagination as long as I can remember.”

His family told stories, but much of the government’s records attached to Keaton had been lost over time.

“I was originally just looking to get replacements, but I discovered that he had no medals on his record,” Reeves said. “He had been issued nothing, and I just felt like this needed to be changed.”

It was far from easy and far from simple to get the record set straight.

“It was an extreme amount of work,” he said. “Online, it makes it seem you just fill out a form and you submit it. But oftentimes, we would find we would get no responses. Proving that one: he was a soldier, that he served, that he was in World War I. But then we also had to prove the connection to him in order to get this to go through.”

Months went by, research was done and representatives were called in to help.

It all came together the morning of Veterans Day at the World War I Museum and Memorial’s Veterans Day ceremony.

Reeves and the rest of Keaton’s surviving family were finally presented the medals Keaton had been long overdue — pins, bars, a Purple Heart Medal and a World War I Victory Medal.

“I am very glad that it happened. I am shocked, in fact, that it did. … This is really about Tom, and I’m so glad that this was able to happen for him,” Reeves said, reflecting on his great-great grandfather’s sacrifice. “I was asked a lot through this whole entire process, ‘Why do you care so much?’ And I guess the best way I could think of it is, I didn’t know him, but he didn’t know me and he cared about me.”

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.