Larry Thurber spends most of his days in a wheelchair or in bed waiting. A stroke has left the 74-year-old unable to speak much. But in 1951, as Private First Class Thurber, he was the latest in a proud history of military service.

"All of my great grandparents my dad and everybody had enlisted right away and he wanted to enlist when he was 17 but Ma wouldn't let him," said Thurber's brother Harold.

Larry would eventually end up in Korea, where his life would change while helping a medic drag a man from the battlefield.

"When they got him down to the aid station he said I gotta go back up the hill and they said your not going anywhere... You're wounded too."

Thurber had tendons of two fingers severed from a gunshot wound, eventually leading him out of the service. And though he would get three other medals from Korea, he never got the Purple Heart. Over the past two years his brother Harold contacted Veteran's Affairs five times but with no luck. Then last fall he contacted Senator Russ Feingold for help.

"I called Russ Feingold's office and told him the trouble i'd been having and even then it took quite a while."

Despite the trouble, Feingold's office was able to secure the long-awaited purple heart.

"This service officer down in Madison... he finally called me and told me I think were gonna have good news... Well I thought that's gotta be the Purple Heart."

The Purple Heart ceremony for Larry Thurber will be held at the Strawberry Lane Medical Center in Wisconsin Rapids tomorrow at 11:30a.m.