Greenville WWII veteran lost his medals. Here's how a stranger helped him get them back

A chance encounter at lunch a year and half ago gave Keith Morton a new mission, one he completed on Thursday. 

In 2019, Morton, a retired police chief from Fountain Inn, met with a friend for lunch at Rolling Green Village retirement community. There, he met Elbert "Ebb" Culp.

"We started talking, and I found out that Ebb was a World War II vet," Morton said. "I asked him about his service and somehow the conversation drifted around to his medals that he earned serving in WWII. And he said he didn’t know what happened to them, they were gone."

So Morton set out to get them back.

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After almost two years of searching and planning, Morton helped arrange a small ceremony honoring Ebb at his retirement home on Thursday, alongside his family and friends. 

"We don’t know what happened to his original medals and although these are different medals, they represent a 'thank you' and that’s what I wanted that to be is to thank him for what he had done,” Suzanne, Ebb's wife, said. 

The pair had only known each other for five months when they wed in 1957. Suzanne said she knew when she met Ebb that he was going to be her husband. This year, they celebrated 64 years of marriage. 

Ebb served in the United States Navy from December 1943 to January 1946, during World War II. The various medals he received for his service were misplaced, which is something that happens often to veterans across the country.

Carey Bolt, a veterans affairs officer for Laurens County who helped get Ebb's medals back to him, said numerous veterans come to their office each year seeking help finding their misplaced medals. 

For Ebb, who celebrated his 100th birthday at the end of May, the ceremony meant the world. 

"It’s just unbelievable that this would come to me at my age. I’m overly pleased with this. To have this number of people and to have what I call celebrities of whatever type,” Ebb said. 

The celebrity guest that Ebb referred to was state Rep. Doug Gilliam, who presented Ebb with the medals he had lost — an American campaign medal, Asiatic-Pacific campaign medal, World War II victory medal, honorable discharge lapel pin, and both a United States flag and a South Carolina state flag. 

Some of Ebb's friends in the retirement community attended the ceremony honoring him. Marlene Wynn, who has lived in the community since October, eats lunch with Ebb and Suzanne everyday. 

"I am just so thrilled for him," Wynn said. She said even though Ebb sometimes struggles with his hearing that "when he finally hears you, he lights up like a lightbulb." 

Ebb's children and a grandson, Drew Culp, were there to support the family's patriarch. 

"If he was as great of a Navy man as he is a grandfather, then he was the best of the best," Drew said.