(Image via NJ.com/Marvin Johnson)

In 1943, Elizabeth Johnson made a decision that was especially rare for black women at her time. Johnson, who grew up in poverty in Atlanta as one of 15 siblings, decided to join the Women’s Army Corps. She was trained at Fort Devens in Massachusetts and then relocated to Fort Dix in New Jersey, where she cared for injured soldiers returning from the war.

In 1946 Elizabeth Johnson was honorably discharged and presented with medals for her service. Over the years, she rarely spoke of her service, most likely due to poor treatment she received as a black woman. “I could tell that she was subject to a lot of bad treatment,” her son Marvin John tells NJ.com. When, a Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office agent, recently came across her service papers, the memory of Elizabeth’s time serving the United States was revived. After Marvin Johnson realized that his mother’s medals were missing, he reached out to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which was able to send replacements.

He presented the four medals to his mother, now 94, at the hospital she has been staying in for the past few weeks since falling ill. Elizabeth Johnson cried tears of joy at the sight of the formerly lost medals.