Boerne will take time to honor area Purple Heart recipients Wednesday during a ceremony at Veterans Plaza on National Purple Heart Day.
Mark Sierra, owner and chef of Compadres Hill Country Cocina, will speak at 10 a.m. Wednesday about the Purple Heart Project and what National Purple Heart Day is.
“ I’ll talk about why it’s important that we keep honoring these individuals, and the families. They deal with it, too, right alongside their recipient,” Sierra said.
The local Purple Heart project began four years ago as a onetime dinner to honor those who served in our country’s military campaigns who were wounded or killed in action.
“The Purple Heart Project started here as a dinner and that’s all it was going to be, one dinner once a year,” Sierra said. “And then it just took off.”
The 2024 gala scheduled in November will be the Project’s fifth such dinner, where more than 100 Purple Heart recipients have been honored.
“It went from initially, about 40-50 people here (at Compadres) with five recipients. Then the following year, we had about 180 at the Kendall,” he said. “Then it went up 230, 250, it’s just kept growing.”
And so has the Purple Heart Project. Now an official 501c3 nonprofit, the Project was instrumental in installing special parking spot designators at every school campus in Boerne, he said, as well as spots such as the Bergheim Volunteer Fire Department, the Boerne Visitors Center, Boerne Stadium and Compadres.
On Wednesday, the Bruno Phillips VFW Post 688 will provide a Color Guard prior to a 21-gun salute. Local legend Jim Mando will play the National Anthem on trumpet, with a choral performance planned by a St. Peter’s Group Choir.
There will be the presentation of the Purple Heart proclamation by the Military Order of the Purple Heart, and a Purple Heart custom flag presented to Boerne Mayor Frank Ritchie.
There are an estimated 1.8 million Purple Heart recipients in the United States. The Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH) Department of Texas, chartered in February 1984, consists of 21 chapters and represents about 47,000 living recipients.
Sierra said the Purple Heart Project will recognize Wednesday’s attending Purple Heart recipients en masse.
“We’ll have quite a few Purple heart recipients there that day,” he said, although he will be the first to tell you, not all Purple Heart recipients are “public” about it.
“We’re not trying to put them in the spotlight. Our goal is to have them there, together, for each other. That’s the cool part of it,” he said.
He said it’s rewarding to see, for instance, recipients from tours in Afghanistan or Iraq meet up with veterans of Vietnam, or Korea, even World War II.
“They literally open up and they interact, as if they were in the same platoon,” he said.
That interaction and recognition often brings them back, filling them with a renewed sense of belonging.
“At the same time, they see the good time they had,” Sierra said, “They’ll approach us, ‘Hey, whenever you have an event, let me know, I want to come help out.’ That gives them a sense of purpose, to continue to serve.”
Chuck Brower, Sierra’s right-hand man with the Purple Heart Project, said each year at least one recipient comes back to be a part of some aspect of the Project — whether it be to help with the scholarships given to the Boerne Boys and Girls Club to cover yearly fees for children of veterans, or with the next gala.
“Each year, we’ve had someone from the previous year come in and help,” Brower said. “It’s a lot of work but for us, it’s a labor of love.”
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