Medal of Honor now at Wheaton school

The timing could not have been better for Monroe Middle School officials.

Just as Michelle Monroe Gattas was in Wheaton last fall visiting the gravesite of her uncle — and the school's namesake — James Howard Monroe, school officials called her cellphone and asked if she would be amenable to the school placing a wreath at the site on Veterans Day last year.

Gattas already had been wondering where she would permanently store the Medal of Honor Monroe earned during the Vietnam War.

She said she could not ignore the coincidence and decided to let the school be the final resting place of the medal her uncle earned by pouncing on a live grenade and saving his fellow soldiers.

“It was just really a sign to me,” she said of the timing. “It feels so right, it's all good.”

On Friday, crews at the school completed a wall in its main office memorializing Monroe, and next week the school will host an official dedication ceremony for the Medal of Honor. The ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. Friday, May 27, at the school, 1855 Manchester Road, Wheaton. Among the speakers will be Principal Jason Stipp, Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 Superintendent Brian Harris, Gattas and U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam.

On the once-empty wall now hangs the framed medal as well as various historical clippings related to Monroe. Pictures show his family receiving the medal along with one of two soldiers whose life Monroe saved by his heroic deed.

In the dark night of Vietnam's Hoai Nhon Province on Feb. 16, 1967, a hail of gunfire surrounded Pfc. James Howard Monroe. A foxhole had just been nailed by an intense grenade attack. The 22-year-old Army medic ignored the small-arms fire and reached the site, which had been transformed into a battlefield graveyard.

Seeing no survivors in the foxhole, Monroe turned his attention to other soldiers' cries for help and crawled back, once again avoiding the deadly gunfire. He sought the platoon sergeant and instead found a bleeding radio operator.

With intense fire threatening him, Monroe began treating the operator's wounds. Then, a live grenade fell in front of him.

In an amazing display of selflessness, Monroe shouted a warning and then gave up his life by falling on the grenade and smothering the blast with his body.

Gattas was 11 years old at the time and said she was devastated when she heard the news of her Uncle Jimmy, her father's only sibling.

“As a child, as an 11-year-old, it was so confusing,” she said. “It was so shocking because Jimmy was only in Vietnam three months. Everybody was devastated. It was a very frightening time for a young child.”

On Oct. 17, 1968, Monroe's parents received his Medal of Honor at a Washington D.C. ceremony.

Shortly thereafter, the school board in Wheaton renamed Westside Junior High School after the war hero following a public vote that overwhelmingly sided with James Howard Monroe.

After Monroe's father died in 1980 and his mother died in 2000, the medal left their Mountain View, Ark., home and made its way to Wheaton, where Monroe's brother — Gattas' father — lived.

In 2007, he died after a short illness and Gattas took the medal to her Ottawa, Wis. home. That set the stage for the medal's latest move.

“I always knew the medal should not be in my home,” she said. “I never felt it was the right place for it. We hope that it will inspire (students) when they reflect upon the meaning and feel such a source of pride to live in this country.”

For Principal Stipp, bringing the medal to the school was a no-brainer. When he was first hired by the school in 2008, he made the mistake many others do and thought the school had been named after the fifth U.S. president.

But a little research revealed the school's actual namesake was a Wheaton native who graduated from Wheaton Central High School in 1962. He then attended Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1966.

Evidence of the school's reverence for Monroe exists both in the halls and in the school's celebration of achievement. The school's student of the year award is named after him. Also, a large mural of an eagle holding a Medal of Honor in its talons greets visitors as well as one of a Monroe head shot.

While crews put the final pieces on the memorial wall in place Friday, Stipp was overcome with emotion for several reasons, including the work put into the venture by his faculty, as well as Assistant Principal Sue Baldus, who made the initial call to Gattas while she was at the cemetery.

Also, he said, just knowing the sacrifice it took to earn the medal and knowing that the family had chosen the school to display the medal was appreciated.

“It's been a labor of love getting this done,” he said. “We are very grateful she would consider us as a housing for this medal.”

Gattas said she could sense the passion coming from the school staff.

As she thinks back on her “cool uncle,” she says she expects a wave of emotion at Friday's ceremony. Uncle Jimmy will always be remembered and would have approved of the decision to bring the medal to Wheaton.

“He was an ordinary man doing an extraordinary thing,” Gattas said. “That's who he was. My family is nodding from heaven and it's the right thing to do.”