Tell Us about Your Hero

As our nation prepares to pause to remember its war dead on Memorial Day, May 26, The Courier asks its readers:

“Tell us about someone you know who died for our country.”

He could have served with the Army in World War I, World War II or Korea. Or, she could have served with the Navy or Marine Corps in Vietnam or Operation Desert Storm. Or, maybe, he or she died performing some public service for our country in another way, perhaps as a police officer or firefighter.

He could have been a family member. She could have been a high school friend.

Write about your hero and post a comment below with your story and rememberances.

Click here to read submissions printed in The Courier newspaper over the 2008 holiday.

Comments

[Jerry]

Wake up Northwest Ohio

Why do you think we are losing jobs, our brightest kids moving out of state, little interest of companies moving into the area... unfortunately there is more truth to the article than many want to believe...it is so easy to point finers at the liberals. We need to wake up... the world is changing...we need to teach our children to have a broader view of the world, teach them to have a better understanding/ respect of others who think and look different and to place more value on education.

Jerry

[Connie Benedict]

My hero is my brother Freddie Stemen. He died in Viet Nam at the age of 21, Feb. 9, 1968. He was a Marine and very proud of it. My brother-in-law was a marine and Freddie wanted to fight for his country also. Freddie was funny and had a heart of gold. He would give any one the shirt off his back and had a few times. I remember him singing crazy songs and laughing and walking on his hands. I miss my brother to this day and wonder what would of been, had he still been here. I got the news that I was pregnant in 1968 and a few hours later learned of my brothers death. It made me very sad. I named my son after my brother, Frederick Milton, so part of him does live on.

[Emily]

I remember my cousin John on Memorial Day. He was killed a little over three years ago during his third tour of Iraq at the age of 22. John had joined the Marines after 9/11. He thought that was what he needed to do. After his first tour in Iraq he could volunteer for other tours. He continued to volunteer for them saying that with the things he saw he knew he needed to go back.

Unfortunately for me it had become too easy to depersonalize any story that related to someone in the military dying and the hurt it caused their family. That really brought it home to me how real those stories are and how every day, in one war or another, there are so many brave people serving are country and who have served our country previously. God bless all of those who serve and who have served before.

[Cheryl Treece]

Dear SPAM

I am the wife of a Vietnam Veteran.

Thank you for your service and welcome home.

[SPAM]

Sounds like you may have your own war going on here, hope no one gets injured. I don't think it really matters who or when we honer those that have fallen,only that they are rememberd, and the reason for there sacrifice, so that you and I have the freedoms that we enjoy by being able to voice our opinions freely. Lets face it we all have opinions and most stink, but we still have the right to express them. And thats all I have to say about that.

I would like to see us honer all the men and woman who so paid the price of laying down there lives for the sake of others. Beleiving in a cause that was greater than themselves and willing to sacrifice whatever it took to see it through till the end. Let us never forget the sacrifices that were made by those brave souls so that we may continue to enjoy this American Dream, for there dreams were cut short so that others could continue. For I myself Thank God every day that I was allowed to continue on, when so many others were not, for I am a Marine veterian that served in Viet-nam and over fifty eight thousand of my fellow comrades in arms never returned home to the land they loved and died for. Let us never forget, I know I won't.

[Cheryl Treece]

Absolutely Jason. I have a problem including firemen and policemen (who have died) in Memorial Day. Last year the Courier included anyone who died for what ever reason.

A thousand veterans try to commit suicide every week/month (don't remember which). I don't know how many succeed.

Memorial Day is hard day for a lot of veterans without sharing it with everyone else who died.

[Jason]

Actually Cheryl, Memorial Day is for those in the military that have actually died, be it in combat or otherwise. Veteran's Day is for our veterans.

[Rebecca]

The military veteran I remember on Memorial Day is not someone I knew personally. I don't even know his name. I was visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. a few years ago, and by about the middle panels of the Wall I had to step back and lean against a post for the chain line defining the walk along the memorial. I was so overwhelmed by name after name after name of dead soldiers and sailors. It gave me time to observe the crowds of people who visit the Wall.

A man came by, paper and pencil in hand, looking for a name to take a rubbing. How he looked struck me as what most people probably mean when they say "hippie": long hair, well-worn clothes, sandals, that pale cast of someone subsisting on veggies and pot. He was getting the same sideways glances people might have been throwing me had they known what I look like on the inside, the kind of glances that say, "What are YOU doing here?"

It turns out that he was looking for his brother's name, which he eventually found among the tallest panels. The name was out of his reach, and the park ranger who carries a stool was busy with someone else. Then someone else, and someone else. Anybody but the hippie. Being a shrimp, there wasn't much I could do to help him. Then along came an African-American family of a man, woman and young boy. Statuesque, sharply dressed, crispy new tennis shoes, conducting themselves with the utmost propriety. They paused when this hippie fellow came up to them, pointing to the top of the wall and asking, "Can you help me get my brother's name?"

In a moment of American melting pot clarity, the man lifted the boy onto his shoulders, pressing his face against the Wall while the woman offered spotting and a reassuring hand on both of their backs, and the hippie handed the paper and pencil up to the boy. The boy rubbed the lead over the paper with the gentle and slow strokes his elementary art school teacher taught him, while the man's legs quivered and shook with the awkward pose and increasingly growing weight of the youth. Eventually the project was completed, the boy returned to earth, and the adults shook hands and parted ways.

I don't know how else this soldier's death is remembered, grieved or honored by his brother, his friends, other strangers who come by the Wall. But I remember him. I remember that his name, chiseled in granite, brought together American people. If that could happen to another five people for every one name on that Wall, that would be cause for national honoring indeed.

[Cheryl Treece]

I don't believe there were female sailors during the Vietnam War. Also I thought Memorial Day was for Veterans.