HARRISON — When Saundra Skiesgelas found the Purple Heart in her aunt’s apartment in New Hampshire more than a decade ago, she didn’t know defying her relatives’ wishes would bring her family closer together.

Her aunt, Genevieve Guidi, told her to get rid of the medal — a Purple Heart awarded to a World War II veteran — but Skiesgelas couldn’t bring herself to do it. She kept it, and eventually learned it belonged to Guidi’s first husband, Army Sgt. James Hanlon of Boston, who was killed in World War II when he was 35.

That was in 2003. On Sunday, Skiesgelas’ determination saw the award returned to Hanlon’s nieces, distant relatives whom she had never met. Now, the women say, they’re family.

“I met them for the first time today, but I feel like I’ve known them forever. I feel like I’ve gained some new family,” Skiesgelas said Sunday.

At a small ceremony with the American flag billowing in the wind, the medal was presented to two of Hanlon’s nieces, Patricia Weeks of Gorham and Cynthia Mowles of Saco after 11 years of searching and 72 years after it was first issued.

The event traversed history: Hanlon died in Oran, Algeria, in 1942 after his troop was ambushed following an amphibious assault.

Skiesgelas’ search for Hanlon’s family didn’t pick up steam until 2009 after her aunt’s death, when she found a prayer book, pictures of Hanlon and his obituary while cleaning out Guidi’s room.

Trying to pair the medal with family, she scanned the Internet, phone book and even the Branson Veterans Memorial Museum in Missouri. She was “on a mission.”

Dead ends held up the search at times.

“At those times, I’d feel so down,” she said.

On one such snag, she contacted Purple Hearts Reunited for help.

At the time of Hanlon’s death, families learned of their loved-ones’ wartime deaths through the postman, according to Capt. Zachariah Fike, founder of Purple Hearts Reunited.

“When a soldier dies, this medal became the last physical item they received. To reunite them with this piece its really powerful. It brings closure,” Fike said.

Since 2012, Fike’s organization has returned more than 100 medals and artifacts to military families.

Fike was happy to take on a new case, but he was busy with a deluge of searches already ahead of him; the full-time Vermont Army National Guard Captain and father said the organization receives 3 to 5 medals a week — more following weeks when there are media reports — and some 300 medals are in his basement, awaiting homes.

Enter forensic genealogist Michael Brophy. Brophy, who typically scours history for deed-rights involving the oil industry, took on the project pro-bono.

“This is the stuff that’s personally gratifying,” Brophy said.

More time passed without word, and Skiesgelas, thinking the search had reached the end, considered donating the medal a museum. The next day, she got a call from Fike. 

“I’ll never forget it. I was on the road at the time and saw I had a missed call on my phone. I pulled over. I just had a feeling.”

The group found Hanlon’s nieces in Maine.

“When I found him, I started to cry,” she said.

Weeks, who was 11 when James — “Jimmy” to everyone — died, recalled her uncle as a jovial man full of laughter and stories.

“I had come home from school and went to the grocery store because I wanted a candy. This being a small town, everybody knew everybody and they told me I’d better go home; there was bad news,” Weeks said.

Hanlon’s body was returned to America in 1949 and is buried in Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York.

Hanlon’s other decorations include the Bronze Star, the Good Conduct Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the American Defense Medal, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with two campaign stars and arrowhead, WWII Victory Medal, Presidential Unit Citation and Combat Infantry Badge, Fike said.

Hugging each other and tearing, Weeks, Mowles and Skiesgelas found they had a more unlikely connection still: Just down the road from the ceremony at Skiesgelas’ brother’s house lives Weeks’ daughter.

“I’ve been so touched by how much people cared, especially Saundra who stuck with the search,” Weeks said.