Mark Kelly (left) and Gabrielle Giffords visit in their home with David and Penny Welch, to whom Kelly and Giffords presented Welch's father's World War II Navy uniform, Feb. 13, 2015.Gabrielle Giffords and husband Mark Kelly presented a World War II Navy uniform Friday to the daughter of the sailor who wore it.
The story of the uniform, as told in an email from Mark Prentice, press secretary for Giffords' political action committee, Americans for Responsible Solutions, started when Giffords' mother, Gloria, bought it at a thrift store "to help celebrate them becoming a Navy family."
That was in 2007 when Giffords, a member of Congress at the time, married Kelly, a Navy captain and U.S. astronaut at the time. Giffords resigned from Congress in 2012, one year after she was shot. Kelly retired in June 2011.
Prentice said Giffords and Kelly recently found the name Leroy James Vacovsky in the uniform and began "tracking down the veteran's daughter in Illinois, and uniting her with her father's uniform."
They presented the uniform to Vacovsky's daughter, Penny Welch, and her husband, David Welch, in their Tucson home Friday. Her father died about six years ago, Prentice said.
Vacovsky was a ground crewman who worked on Navy planes bound for the Pacific theater in World War II, Prentice said.
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