Kentucky Medal for Freedom

The Kentucky Medal for Freedom is created by KRS 40.353 and awarded by the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs to an individual killed in action on or after January 1, 1991. The qualifying circumstances are four, and the last one is broader than "killed in action" usually implies. The individual must have been killed while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States; while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party; or while serving in a combat zone as designated by presidential order. A death in a designated combat zone qualifies without a requirement that it occur in contact with an enemy. Who is eligible spans four categories in subsection (2), and the connections to Kentucky are deliberately varied. Members of the Kentucky National Guard or a Reserve Component stationed in Kentucky. Members of a state National Guard or a Reserve Component who named Kentucky as a home of record. This reaches a member of another state's Guard whose home of record was Kentucky. Members of the regular United States Armed Forces who named Kentucky as a home of record. Members of the regular Armed Forces, a state National Guard, or a Reserve component who were buried in Kentucky on or after July 15, 2008, and have a surviving spouse, parent, or next available family member who is a Kentucky resident. This is the catch-all, and it can qualify a servicemember with no other Kentucky connection at all, on the strength of burial here plus a resident family member. KDVA enters each recipient's name on the Kentucky Medal for Freedom roll, and may draw on the veterans' program trust fund to defray the cost of the medal. Apply with the Kentucky Medal for Freedom Nomination form and the DD-1300 Report of Casualty, sent to the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs, attention Medal for Freedom, 1111B Louisville Road, Frankfort. One medal is issued per deceased servicemember, and KDVA works an order of precedence among family members for who receives it: surviving spouse, then children, then parents, then legal custodian, then sibling with the oldest first, then grandparents, then another relative, then a close friend or associate. The department promulgates administrative regulations to carry out the section, so procedural detail sits in regulation rather than in the statute.