Marine recruiter donates dress blues to fulfill vet's last wish

Nancy Wright has mended garments for six years at Don’s Cleaners, but recently faced an apparel predicament that couldn’t be solved with a needle and thread.

Just four days after her brother-in-law’s death, the 59-year-old seamstress drove down to Union, Kentucky, to visit her sickly brother Michael Wright.

Michael Wright had enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18 during the Vietnam War. For the last 10 years, he had been on disability due to breathing problems.

“He was proud to be a Marine,” Nancy Wright said.

She said he flew the POW/MIA, Marine Corps and American flags on his front porch.

Their brother-in-law, an army veteran, died Dec. 16, and Michael Wright enjoyed the funeral ceremony and told his sister he hoped to be buried in his dress blues.

Just three days after her brother had expressed that wish, Nancy Wright was faced with making it a reality; Michael Wright died at age 65 at Deaconess Hospital on Dec. 23.

But there was a problem — his uniform was destroyed in a house fire about 20 years ago.

Nancy Wright made it her mission to track down a dress blues jacket.

She called the Army Surplus in Evansville and was told most people don’t donate dress blues because they keep the garb for life. Employees told her she would have a hard time finding one.

In desperation, Nancy Wright called the marine recruiting office in Vincennes, where she reached Sgt. Douglas Hall.

Hall, a U.S. Marine Corps recruiter, told her that dress blues usually are ordered online and would take a while to arrive. But then he asked when the veteran’s visitation and burial were and what size he wore.

Luckily, Hall had one on hand — a size 42 regular dress blues jacket.

“You get somebody to come and get it, then you can have it,” she said Hall told her.

The only difference from her brother’s original jacket and this one was that it had sergeant stripes.

Nancy Wright quickly called her brother’s daughter, Molly Snider, and her husband, Ed, who live in Vincennes, and sent them to pick up the jacket.

What the family didn’t know, however, was that the jacket they were picking up, the one Hall generously offered at no charge, was his own original dress blue jacket that he’d been married in.

“He knew that my brother was going to be buried in it, but he still gave it up,” Nancy Wright said. “They say, ‘Once a Marine always a Marine,’ and this proved it to me that the Marines are a brotherhood.”

Nancy Wright said she broke down in tears and could not thank Hall enough.

Hall said he knew it wasn’t feasible for Nancy Wright to get a jacket in the time frame they needed it in, so he decided to offer up his own.

“Even though there was some sentimental value in it to me, it was an honor to be able to give it to their family in their time of need,” Hall said.

Hall spent his first eight years in the Marine Corps as an infantry marine and was deployed to multiple combat zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

“My day-to-day activities now are to find the most qualified applicants and prepare them for the rigors of recruit training to earn the title of Unites States Marine,” Hall said.

Hall has two other sets of dress blues, but they were not the sizes Nancy Wright needed.

Hall said giving up the jacket was difficult but it was more important for a former marine to have it.

“To be able to help their family out is a small token of my appreciation to his service and to be able to have a positive impact on his family in their time of loss was well worth it in my opinion,” he said.

Hall said this act shows the brotherhood of the Marine Corps.

“Marines always say that they’re there for one another, and there are some instances where that’s true, but we’re also humans, and that’s just not always the case. I think for me to be able to do that speaks fully into what our core beliefs are and is in the spirit of corps that we live by,” Hall said. “I didn’t have to think twice about it, in all honesty.”

Nancy Wright said she appreciates Hall’s loving and caring generosity for a man he never even met.

“It felt like an early Christmas present. It felt like it was God’s way of saying, ‘I am going to help you fulfill this wish,’” she said. “It made me happy at a sad time, and that’s why it meant a lot to me for Hall to do this.”