My Dad passed away very quickly and quietly,He served in Army during World War 2 and I know he recieved awards including purple heart. I only got to know my Dad last 5 yrs of his life, I am looking for history or friends from then to learn more about how he served in Army and more of my painted heroism of him can be filled in properly. His name is Franklin H. Scott, from New York originaly and now passed and buried in Georgia.Anyones help is deeply appreciated. Beth

Similar questions have been posted before with some pretty good ideas if you spend some time reading through them.
The number one place to start would be with the national archives and request his service record;
http://www.archives.gov/
Once you have that and identify some of his assigned units, try looking for veterans groups for those specific units and contact them for info and/or people that may have known him.
Hopefully his records survived the infamous fire of 1973. Good luck-

hi. i was looking for info on my dad as well. he was in the army and the air force and served in the korean war. i want to fill out the requests for military records on the archives site, but it wants to know his service info..but that's what i was looking for. i don't know what units or whatever they asked for, but that's what i want to know. how could i find that out?? my dad passed away from cancer in 1978, i was 9 yrs old...and we didn't really talk about military stuff back then!

p.s.

i mean... to get his service record, i need to know way more info than i have. idk.. just wanted to know how he served. i heard he ran top secret documents!! he has a medal for it. i want to get them too..but they want to know more info than i have! been almost 30 yrs since he died

how do i get this info if that's what they want to know to get what i want??

Give them as much as you can:
Name, Place and date of birth, Social Security Number.
You may need to go to different places to piece it together, if you don't have his SSN - try the Social Security office in your area. If they are able to provide the number, you can get his date and place of birth from his card application, etc. SSNs are not protected info after death. You can see if he is in the Social Security death index online (Only those reported to Social Security would be there)at http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi
Other places to look - where did he bank last? Does that bank retain info on past customers? Did he own property? Tax records at the local clerks office may have info. Places like that are where I'd start and even if they don't pan out directly, they may point you in the direction of someplace that will. Where is he buried? Did he receive military funeral honors? The funeral director may have that in a file cabinet somewhere and it would have a SSN or service number with it. Just think of all the businesses and government offices that know who you are and think if they may have records on your father.

I just sent in the SF180 to get information on my father. Unfortunately, many records were destroyed in a 1972 fire.

The funeral place gave us a copy of his discharge papers and his record of separation but I wanted mor info.

Details on the 1973 fire as provided by the NPRC:

http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/fire-1973.html

Army Personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960 80% destroyed

Air Force Personnel discharged, September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964 (with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.) 75% destroyed.

No duplicate copies of the records that were destroyed in the fire were maintained, nor was a microfilm copy ever produced. There were no indexes created prior to the fire. In addition, millions of documents had been lent to the Department of Veterans Affairs before the fire occurred. Therefore, a complete listing of the records that were lost is not available. Nevertheless, NPRC (MPR) uses many alternate sources in its efforts to reconstruct basic service information to respond to requests.