A wonderful Story

   "A hidden testament of love"

The following article was published in The Pueblo Chieftain in the Lifestyle/entertainment section on Tuesday, November 10, 1987 by reporter Mary Jean Porter as told by Dorothy Boyd.  Mrs. Boyd was a long time resident of Las Animas, Colorado. 

Dorothy Boyd has a most unusual story for Veterans Day --- a testament of love hidden for 68 long years.  Her story begins in 1918 when young LeRoy Boyd left Iowa to join the Army "to make the world safe, like so many other boys did."  Boyd was a member of Company M, 20th Infantry, stationed at Camp Douglas in Salt Lake City, Utah.  But he contracted influenza "and that ended his Army career".

Boyd returned home, as his wife tells the story, bringing his rifle and several clips of ammunition with him.  "He always took care of that rifle but didn't use it.  It always was a treasure  of his.  When he died I gave it to my son-in-law and he took it back to Iowa."

Boyd was a Methodist minister and the chaplain at Fort Lyon V.A. Hospital for 32 and 1/2 years.  He was the Las Animas correspondent for the Pueblo Star-Journal from 1930 until he died in 1976, and he also was a correspondent for the Pueblo Chieftain.

Amount a year ago, when Mrs. Boyd was preparing to move from Las Animas to Villa Towers in Pueblo, she came across a suitcase of her late husband's things.  "I had an idea of what was in there -- old pictures -- but the lock was broken and I couldn't get it open.  So I had someone else open the suitcase and inside were a couple of clips of ammunition for his rifle".

"My goodness," she thought.  "Those have been here since 1918."  Mrs. Boyd recalled.

She couldn't decide how to dispose of the ammunition until a friend, the late Wilbur Miles, volunteered to help by firing the shells from his own gun.

"The next morning -- Wilbur and his wife always walked early in the morning, and so did I -- I saw Wilbur coming back from his walk.  I could see that he had a smile on his face and was going to kid me about something."  Miles kidded Mrs. Boyd about the present she never received from her husband.  When she didn't understand, he told her he hadn't fired the ammunition.  Instead he had taken the shells apart and disposed of the powder.  In one of them, he found a smaller caliber bullet that had been made into a locket and inscribed with LeRoy's company and infantry numbers.

Mrs. Boyd says it's not possible that her husband had the locket made for her because they didn't know each other when he was in the service.  And she's sure if he had intended it for someone else, he would have given it to that person. 

Mrs. Boyd holding the locket made from a bullet.  She sees it as a long-lost testament of her late husband's love.

"This has to be the solution:  when he brought back his gun, he probably reached down and picked up a couple of clips of ammunition in the barracks.  Some shy boy must have hidden the locket in the shell so the others wouldn't find it and tease him." "He never got it to his girl and here it is all these years later.  It never would have come to light if Wilbur hadn't decided to take apart those shells." Mrs. Boyd doesn't wear the locket because she says it wasn't made for her.  But she treasures it because it reminds her of her late husband.  "It's really something.  People come back with all kinds of kinds of souvenirs and LeRoy came back with this.  "I think it's a pretty good story - - it's not one of those gruesome war stories.  It's one in a million.  It's a fluke.

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