The medal was established last year to recognize families of service people who died either in combat or of wounds received in action.
LONGMEADOW – Jean James has been steeped in military tradition all her life.
Greenville, S.C., where she grew up, was home to an air base during World War II.
Her grandfather served in the Marine Corps. Her late husband, Leon James, and his three brothers were Navy men, at one point all serving aboard the same ship.
But nothing prepares a mother for the loss of a son to war.
James is the mother of Army Lt. Col. Leon G. James, who died in 2005 at Walter Reed Army Hospital of wounds sustained a roadside bombing in Iraq. He was 47. The colonel grew up in Springfield and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Now his mother has received the Massachusetts Medal of Liberty, a new honor established last year for next-of-kin of service people who died either in action or of wounds received in action.
Since her son’s widow and three daughters live in Kentucky, Jean James, as next-of-kin, was urged to apply for the Massachusetts medal.
At ceremonies conducted in April at the Statehouse in Boston, she was among 30 people presented with the new gold, heart-shaped medal which hangs from a purple ribbon.
There was a reception, music by a military band, a flag ceremony, speeches and a benediction. One by one, the honorees were escorted by National Guard members to receive the medal. They also were presented with plaques and certificates.
Col. James was one of Leon and Jean James’ six children. Her husband wanted to name a son after himself, but she wanted to avoid the “junior” or “big Leon-little Leon” tags, according to Jean James. She announced that baby Leon would be known as “Buster,” and that’s what people always called him.
“Buster” James was a born leader, his mother remembers, and his classmates at Technical High School in Springfield looked up to him.
When a bone disorder kept him from playing football, he threw himself into Boy Scouting and earned his Eagle Scout designation, the top honor in Boy Scouting, at a young age. He was a camp counselor, and served as a commander for the Reserve Officer Training Corps at his school a full year instead of the usual half-year.
Buster was also a runner and competed in track events. One of his sisters-in-law still runs in his memory in the annual “Army Ten-Miler” at the Pentagon in October; one year, nine people ran the race in his memory.
A 25-year career Army man, Col. James was commander of his battalion when he was fatally wounded in Iraq. He was serving with the 3rd Battalion, 314th Field Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Brigade 78th Division based at Fort Drum, N.Y. , and had been in Iraq for about six months when he was injured.
According to the Army report, James was traveling in a vehicle with other soldiers when an explosive device on a median curb detonated. James was severely wounded in the neck.
He was flown to Germany and then to Walter Reed in Arlington, Va., where members of the family converged.
Though brain-damaged and unconscious, he was never alone for a moment, recalled his mother.
“I stayed in the room and watched,” she said.
So, too, did others, including his brother, Thomas, from Florida, who stayed with him all night.
It was a sad echo of happier times when the generations would gather for “Buster.” “Always when he was going away,” said Jean, “the family would get together.
“Once, before he went to Bosnia, we rented a house on a lake for three days. They went fishing, and there was a ship with an orchestra that sailed right into the town.” That was in Sackets Harbor, N.Y., where the colonel and his family lived.
His mother says she remembers asking him, “Don’t you think it’s time to retire?”
It wasn’t to be. “It’s something born and instilled in these military people,” Jean James said. “Some of them can’t wait to go back because they feel that’s what they ought to be doing.”
James lives with her son Douglas and his wife. She is also mother to Lynnette, who lives in Springfield, Brenda, a resident of Gilbertville and Vicky Wilson, who lives in Manchester, Conn.
Douglas’s children, aged 7 and 9, “talk about Uncle Buster all the time,” their grandmother says. They have little military camouflage caps with the family name printed on them.
At the James’ house this weekend, there will be an American flag flying on Monday in observance Memorial Day, just as it does every day