NEW WINDSOR – Less than a month before President Donald Trump left office, he signed a bill days before Christmas creating the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor Commemorative Coin.
On Thursday, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, [D, NY-18), who helped sponsor the bill, shared the honor with Purple Heart recipients and their families yards away from the entrance to the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor.
“We went to work on this, and we came up with this idea to have a Congressional coin minted here at West Point to honor those who have earned the Purple Heart,” said Maloney. “It’s a huge and very lengthy process to get the sponsors to get it done.”
Maloney said the bill took six to seven years of effort and lobbying in Congress before it landed on Trump’s desk to be signed.
The U.S. Treasury will mint the coins at West Point in 2022, and the $5 gold, $1 silver and half-dollars will be sold to help the National Purple Heart Honor Mission, the not-profit organization that supports the work of the Hall of Honor.
“These coins will not only be a tribute to men and women, but also to further the cause of the National Purple Heart of Honor, all of our programming and the funding to keep this effort going,” said Richard Lay, the Honor Mission’s chairman of the board.
