Andrew Del Gaudio keeps a scrapbook from his more than 20 years as a Marine, filled with articles, photographs and funeral notices — too many funeral notices, he says.
Del Gaudio was leading a rifle company that was ambushed in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006. Five of his fellow Marines were killed.
“It’s important to me to honor their legacy and honor their memory,” Del Gaudio said. “That’s how I keep them alive in my heart.”
Del Gaudio was injured in the ambush and received a Purple Heart, the decoration awarded to service members killed or wounded in combat. He now serves as the Alabama State Commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the only veterans organization made up solely of combat-wounded service members.
“We have that gene in us to continue to serve,” he said.
On August 7, the Military Order of the Purple Heart will hold a community event at the Daphne Civic Center honoring those who have received the distinction. “It will be an opportunity to bring the community together, to bring awareness to what it is that our Purple Heart veterans have done,” Del Gaudio said.
The event is being held in partnership with the Mobile Bay Area Veterans Commission and the South Alabama Veterans Council. “This could really be an amazing event,” said Phil Quigley, vice president of the South Alabama Veterans Council.
Seventy Purple Heart recipients spanning generations, from World War II to Afghanistan, will be honored at the ceremony. “The greatest generation is not going to be here much longer, and we have several that we are fortunate to have coming,” Quigley said. “We have a 102-year-old from Baton Rouge that was in Okinawa. We have one coming from Missouri. How much longer are we going to see these World War Two veterans?”
Del Gaudio will serve as one of the ceremony’s keynote speakers. “Any time that we have an opportunity as an organization to go out and educate folks about the sacrifices that our service members make on a day-to-day basis, that’s why I do it,” he said.
The Military Order of the Purple Heart ceremony will take place Friday, August 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Daphne Civic Center. The event is free and open to the public, and will also include youth activities, vendors and exhibits alongside the recognition of Purple Heart recipients.
A decoration born of revolution
The Purple Heart carries a history that stretches back further than any other American military decoration. General George Washington created the original award, the Badge of Military Merit, during the Revolutionary War, and the modern Purple Heart was revived in 1932 to mark the bicentennial of Washington’s birth, taking the form of a heart-shaped medal bearing his profile.
Unlike decorations that recognize heroism or achievement, the Purple Heart is awarded for something unchosen: being wounded or killed in action against an enemy of the United States. Every recipient shares that single experience, which is what makes the community of recipients unlike any other veterans organization.
That shared experience is the foundation of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the congressionally chartered organization made up solely of combat-wounded veterans. Its chapters across Alabama and the Gulf Coast function as both a service network and a fraternal bond, connecting members who carry injuries, visible and invisible, from conflicts spanning more than seventy years.
Ramadi, 2006
When Del Gaudio’s rifle company was ambushed in Ramadi in 2006, the Anbar province city was one of the most dangerous assignments of the entire Iraq war. Rifle companies operating there faced improvised explosives, ambushes and daily violence in a densely packed urban landscape.
The ambush cost the lives of five Marines from Del Gaudio’s company and left him wounded. His route from that deployment to leadership of the organization’s Alabama chapter follows a pattern common among Purple Heart recipients: a period of recovery, a continued commitment to service, and eventually a role organizing and advocating for others who were wounded in the same wars.
For Del Gaudio, the losses of that ambush remain the center of why he does the work, kept close through the scrapbook of articles, photographs and funeral notices he has assembled across two decades in uniform.
His route from that deployment to leadership of the organization’s Alabama chapter follows a pattern common among Purple Heart recipients: a period of recovery, a continued commitment to service, and eventually a role organizing and advocating for others who were wounded in the same wars.
“We have that gene in us to continue to serve,” he said, describing an ethos that runs through the organization’s membership, many of whom volunteer for veterans’ causes, mentor younger service members and speak publicly about their experiences long after their injuries.
“We have that gene in us to continue to serve,” he said, describing an ethos that runs through the organization’s membership, many of whom volunteer for veterans’ causes, mentor younger service members and speak publicly about their experiences long after their injuries.
Seventy recipients, seven decades of sacrifice
The honorees at the Daphne ceremony span every major American conflict from World War II to Afghanistan, a living cross-section of the wars the United States has fought across nearly a century. Seventy recipients will be recognized, and the roster’s reach from a 102-year-old Okinawa veteran to service members wounded in the most recent fighting gives the event its emotional weight.
Organizers are mindful that the window for honoring the war’s oldest veterans is closing. The WWII veterans who can still travel to ceremonies like this one represent an ever-smaller share of the generation that fought it, which is why Quigley’s question, “How much longer are we going to see these World War Two veterans?”, hangs over the planning of events that bring them together with younger generations of the wounded.
For the community, the ceremony offers a rare chance to see that span of history in one room: a veteran of the Pacific islands, veterans of Korea and Vietnam, and recipients of the Gulf wars, all wearing the same decoration earned in very different circumstances.
The ceremony’s program is built around that recognition, with Del Gaudio among the keynote speakers. Education, he said, is the point: teaching civilians what the decoration represents and what its recipients gave for it.
A partnership across the Bay
Although the ceremony takes place on the Eastern Shore, its organizing reach extends across Mobile Bay. The Mobile Bay Area Veterans Commission and the South Alabama Veterans Council have joined the Military Order of the Purple Heart as partners, reflecting the way veteran organizations in the two-county region coordinate on events that serve all of their members.
Quigley, the veterans council’s vice president, said “This could really be an amazing event,” a measure of the expectations organizers hold for a gathering of this scale on the Gulf Coast, where the military presence runs from Mobile’s port and shipbuilding workforce to the bases and reserve units scattered across the region.
The Daphne Civic Center provides the kind of venue the event requires, with space for the formal ceremony, exhibits and the family activities planned alongside it. Its location in Daphne puts the event within reach of veteran communities in Baldwin County and Mobile alike.
Why the community is invited
Many veterans’ ceremonies are, by design, gatherings of the veterans community itself. This one is deliberately different: free and open to the public, with youth activities, vendors and exhibits arranged alongside the formal recognition of recipients.
The openness reflects the organization’s conviction that the Purple Heart’s meaning is best preserved in public memory. Every recipient earned the decoration in service to the public, and organizers argue that the public’s presence, its attention and its gratitude, is part of what the award represents.
The family-friendly programming also serves a practical purpose. Children who meet a World War II veteran, or hear a Marine describe leading Marines in Ramadi, absorb a lesson that no textbook delivers as directly, and organizers hope those encounters plant a durable respect for military service in the next generation.
Del Gaudio frames the work in terms of unfinished duty. Honoring the five Marines his company lost, and the recipients he now serves alongside, is how he keeps their memories alive, and each public ceremony extends that act of remembrance to a wider circle.
The evening’s details
The ceremony is scheduled for Friday, August 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Daphne Civic Center, an evening slot chosen to make attendance practical for working families and veterans alike. Admission is free, and no tickets are required.
Attendees can expect the formal presentation honoring the seventy recipients, remarks from Del Gaudio and other speakers, and time to tour the exhibits and vendor displays arranged around the ceremony. Organizers have emphasized that the event belongs to the community as much as to the veterans being honored.
For the recipients themselves, the evening will gather comrades who have rarely, if ever, been in one place at the same time. Seventy paths through seventy years of American warfare, all converging on a single hall on the Eastern Shore for one August evening, is precisely the kind of gathering the Military Order of the Purple Heart exists to make happen.