OCONOMOWOC, Wis.— Volunteers at a thrift store in Southeast Wisconsin made an incredible discovery. At first glance, many thought it was something to be thrown away, but with closer inspection, it turned out to be something very meaningful.
Before becoming The Blue Butterfly Thrift Shop last year, the building in Oconomowoc was a funeral home for decades. As thrift shop volunteers were cleaning out the basement, they stumbled on a box in the corner.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Derek Harder, a veteran who volunteers at the thrift shop. “It was from 1968 and there was a name on it. Any veteran that doesn’t come home, I always want to help.”
The box they found had carried the body of a local Marine home, after he was killed in Vietnam. Robert Lutz was only 19 years old when he died.
Harder worked with the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs to find relatives, and was put in touch with Lutz’s niece, Jenny Ebert.
“It really surprised me,” Ebert said. “It’s hard to put into words. 55 years later, and the timing of it.”
She believes it’s a sign from above. She never got the chance to meet her uncle Robert in person, but she felt like she knew him, because of how much her family talked about him. Losing him at such a young age was devastating for everyone.
“It just really left a hole in the family that unfortunately hasn’t been able to be filled,” Ebert said.
Harder is honored to have been able to help provide a little more closure for the family.
“It’s very surreal that we were able to put the pieces together like this,” he said.
The box will be donated to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum to help tell the story of how fallen service members are brought home.
Ebert and Harder are now working together on a letter writing campaign called “Operation Never Forget,” to be included in the museum exhibit. The goal is to have community members write a letter to the 1,500 U.S. service members who never made it home from Vietnam and are listed as “missing in action.” The letters will be placed inside the box.
If anyone is interested in writing a letter for the project you can email either Ebert or Harder at rjebert72@yahoo.com or harder.derek@yahoo.com.
There is also an effort to name the Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in Oconomowoc after Robert Lutz.