Montford Point Marine with Asheville Ties Honored with Congressional Gold Medal

Robin Lake of Fletcher accepted a Congressional Gold Medal honoring her father, the late Corporal James Arthur Edwards.

Robin Lake, family, and representatives of the Montford Point Marines at the Montford Point Marine Memorial.
(L-R): CWO5 Dr. James T. Averhart, Jr., (Ret.), President of Chapter 10, Montford Point Marine Association; the Honorable Carlos Del Toro, Secretary of the United States Navy; Robin Lake, daughter of Honoree James Edwards; Edwards’s grandson Keynon Lake; great-granddaughter Layla Council Lake; and Brigadier General Andrew M. Niebel at the Montford Point Marine Memorial, Lejeune Memorial Gardens, Jacksonville NC.

When the Congressional Gold Medal was posthumously awarded to the late Corporal James Arthur Edwards, it was a long-overdue and long-sought ceremony.

Edwards had been a Montford Point Marine, a member of the segregated, but heroic, unit housed at Camp Lejeune, NC, from 1942 to 1949. Now, eight years after his death, he joined the select group receiving the nation’s highest civilian honor, bestowed fewer than 200 times in the nation’s history.

The August 25th presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to James Edwards’s daughter, Mrs. Robin Lake, and grandson, Keynon Lake, was the culmination of a year-long pursuit of lost records and missing documentation.

Service Overseas, Memories Passed Down

James Edwards served in the Pacific Theater at Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Saipan. As children after World War II, his daughters, Robin and Wendy, and son James Jr., learned at their father’s knee stories of his service.

Robin Lake told The Urban News, “When we were children, he drilled into us his Marine dog tag number: 856082. He had a big marine anchor tattoo on his arm, with “land, sea, air” on it. He made a scrapbook of his own, with a wooden cover on it. I remember in one picture I saw a cemetery that ran from hill to hill, up and down, covered with white crosses. I asked him what they were, and he told me those crosses were for all the soldiers who had died. That was something I never forgot.”

Another powerful story that her father had told her took place just before the Marine’s discharge and return to the States at the end of the war.

“When the war was over, the marines were so happy, they stood around the base shooting their rifles straight up into the sky. He knew that those bullets that went up … would come back down.” So, despite the celebration, “He went under the bunker there, and sure enough, a couple of the marines didn’t make it. Those bullets did come down, and killed them, right when they were ready to come home.”

Congressional Gold Medal awarded to the late Corporal James Arthur Edwards.
Congressional Gold Medal awarded to the late Corporal James Arthur Edwards.

Frustration and Disappointment

When Robin and her sister were looking for information about their father and his military service, they were surprised and frustrated that so much was missing. How, they asked, could the Marines forget him?

Their search had begun when Wendy White, who lives in Peekskill, NY, wondered about their father’s war history. She said to Robin, “I think Daddy was a Montford Point Marine.”

A Helpful Friend and Friends of Friends

Because the Montford Point Marines, unlike the fabled Tuskegee Airman, were not well known, but like them were treated as second-class citizens by the military and the civilian culture, information was hard to come by.

Robin, living in Fletcher, NC, decided to call Camp Lejeune to find out more, but never got a call back. So she told Deacon Bernard Oliphant at her church, Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist, that she had been frustrated in getting anyone at the Marine base to return her calls. Oliphant, who had been a Divisions Chief at the Pentagon, agreed to call a Marine friend of his, and that got the ball rolling.

After the intervention of Oliphant’s friend, their Camp Lejeune contact, Johnny Young, called back. But after several more weeks passed, he still couldn’t find anything on James Edwards.

Another Fresh Start

So Wendy and Robin tried a different tack, beginning with their father’s birth certificate. “We searched for months and were still kind of disappointed. Finally, coming to what felt like the end of the search, I told Wendy, ‘They buried daddy; they have to have some type of record of that!’”

Their father had been buried with military honors in New York in 2014. Wendy, living in Peekskill, called the funeral home to explain the situation and ask for help. Once again they hit a brick wall.

But Robin Lake inherited her father’s perseverance and grit and refused to give up. After diligent effort, she finally received her father’s Marine discharge papers, active-duty papers, and a photograph of him in uniform. She also learned that he was an expert rifleman, and a demolition specialist. “I was so thrilled I couldn’t stop crying,” she told The Urban News.

“We had no idea he was going to get a medal; we just wanted his memory restored.” Once again she called her contact at Camp Lejeune to let him know the papers were in hand. And though Covid delayed them again, he finally called back.

“Yes,” he told her, “your daddy was a Montford Point Marine.”

Why Were the Records Lost?

When the unit first started, the Marine Corps did not keep good records of its Black enlistees. Everyone used dogtag numbers instead of Social Security numbers, and papers got lost. Later records were better kept.

And, since 2012, the Corps is making a concerted effort to find and honor the heroic Montford Point Marines—those who are still living, now in their 90s, or their descendants. Finally, on August 24 of this year, Robin Lake, her son Keynon Lake, his girlfriend Rev. Jackie Hall, and his daughter, Layla, passed through the gates of Camp Lejeune.

Robin Lake accepts the Congressional Gold Medal honoring her father, Montford Marine Corporal James Edwards, from Honorable Carlos Del Toro, Secretary of the United States Navy.
Robin Lake accepts the Congressional Gold Medal honoring her father, Montford Marine Corporal James Edwards, from Honorable Carlos Del Toro, Secretary of the United States Navy.

The following morning at 8 a.m., US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Turo presented the Congressional Gold Medal to the family of Corporal James Arthur Edwards for his service as a Montford Point Marine. The ceremony is available to watch on YouTube: The thirteenth Montford point marine day [Robin Lake accepts the Gold Medal at 51:21].

The Jim Crow World They Came Home To

Of the 21,609 Black men who underwent training at Montford Point and became US Marines during the 1940s, fewer than 300 are still alive, most still unrecognized for their service. Worse, because of segregation and pervasive racism, especially in the Jim Crow South, the Montford Point Marines had to prove themselves over and over again—not just in their military service but after their return to civilian life.

James Edwards started his own business, Robin told us.

“He was a painter. He started a house painting business. But over time he got better and became an interior and exterior decorator,” says Robin Lake. “We were living in Ossining, New York. Over time he did houses of all sorts of celebrities in that area. He did homes for Allen Funt of the old television show Candid Camera; and a house that Jackie Gleason had in Croton, NY, and one for Edie Adams, a big celebrity singer of that time.”

And now his family can proudly display their father’s Congressional Gold Medal in a place of honor, and he will long be remembered as a man who served his nation during some of its darkest days.