Sheila Foxx didn’t think her father, Marine Cpl. Julius Foxx Jr., would have wanted to attend his own Congressional Gold Medal ceremony.

“I don’t even think we could’ve gotten him here [on his own],” she said. “I would have had to pick him up and drive him here. And getting him in a suit would have been difficult.”

When it came to her father, Foxx, a Fredericksburg resident, said it was all about family—not about himself.

Sheila Foxx and her sister, Sharon Foxx, received their father’s bronze medal replica in his honor Friday during a ceremony at the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Quantico.

Foxx, who died in 2001 at 76, was one of about 20,000 black Marines sent to train at Camp Montford Point at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C., from 1942–49 instead of Parris Island, S.C., where their white counterparts trained.

The Montford Point Marines, as they came to be known, endured harsh conditions and institutional racism in the then-newly desegregated Marine Corps.

“They are the pioneers who persevered in a time of racial divide,” said James Averhart Jr., president of the Montford Point Marine Association. “They had to fight for the right to fight.”

Their actions during and after World War II are considered to have broken down barriers created by segregation, paving the way for black service members.

In 2012, the 112th Congress unanimously voted to award all Montford Point Marines the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor awarded by Congress.

However, not all Original Montford Point Marines could be found. Whenever another potential recipient is located, families typically work through red tape and bureaucracy to determine their eligibility.

Sen. Mark Warner and his staff worked to make the process smoother for the Foxx family by assisting them throughout the process to confirm Cpl. Foxx’s eligibility.

For the recently re-elected Virginia senator, the story of each Original Montford Point Marine he comes across is both touching and wonderful.

“The fact is that these Montford Point Marines proved the quality of their service and commitment to their country was about more than the color of their skin,” he said. “It’s something I can take back to my day job.”

The award ceremony, which took place in the museum’s Leatherneck Gallery, featured remarks from members of the Montford Point Marine Association’s chapter at Quantico, Warner and a tribute performed by a Gunnery Sgt. Madyun Shahid.

Shahid, playing the role of an Original Montford Point Marine, expressed his dedication to Corps and country the way many World War II veterans did. Warner and Foxx said their own fathers talked about being in the service, but without any of the graphic details of war.

It was, Sheila Foxx said, this unofficial motto that veterans like her father seemed to live by: Don’t talk about it, do it.