Gold Star wife speaks at OFHM Ceremony

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Last Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 8, three days before the 11th anniver­sary of the ter­ror­ist attacks in New York City, at the Pen­ta­gon, and in the skies over Shanksville, Penn­syl­va­nia, approx­i­mately 250 Gold Star Fam­ily mem­bers joined with mem­bers of the Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial and local dig­ni­taries for the 2012 Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial Ceremony.

Retired GySgt Shawn Del­gado, a Lima Com­pany Marine who also serves as Pres­i­dent of the Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial Board of Trustees, made the ceremony’s wel­com­ing remarks and introductions.

Key speak­ers were Gold Star wife Tri­cia Eng­lish, Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial founder Jerry Jodrey and Con­gress­man Pat Tiberi.

Del­gado reminded every­one they were in atten­dance to remem­ber their loved ones, and to pay trib­ute to, and never for­get, our nation’s heroes; that each marker on the memo­r­ial field rep­re­sents men and women who believed so much in the Amer­i­can way of life they were will­ing to step for­ward and fight for freedom.

“This is a hard time for Gold Star fam­ily mem­bers,” Del­gado said. “The Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial truly believes that worse then death is to be for­got­ten — to for­get what they did. This is our own way to give back to those who will never come home.

“The hard­est part is to live up to the promise they had for their future,” Del­gado con­tin­ued. “They would have made great par­ents, great grand­par­ents and great lead­ers for their com­mu­ni­ties. We have to live our lives to make sure peo­ple never for­get the promise these men and women will never have the chance to live up to.”

Del­gado added that the Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial is spe­cial because it was built with dona­tions — no tax dol­lars or state money was used to build or main­tain the site.

Con­gress­man Tiberi also noted the all-volunteer effort to build and main­tain the memo­r­ial. He said he remem­bers that first cold and soggy day, Feb­ru­ary 18, 2006, when Kath­leen Kinslow, mother of Big Wal­nut grad­u­ate Anthony Kinslow who died in Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom, turned over the first cer­e­mo­nial shovel of soil at the site.

“If it weren’t for the lead­er­ship of so many, this memo­r­ial could not be here,” Tiberi said. “And not a dime of pub­lic money was used; it was all vol­un­teers who started this and kept it going.”

Tiberi also read a let­ter from for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush not­ing that in every gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­cans are called to serve, fight­ing for Amer­i­can ideals across the globe.

Tiberi went on to quote Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan, who said: Free­dom is never more than one gen­er­a­tion away from extinc­tion. We didn’t pass it on to our chil­dren in the blood­stream. It must be fought for, pro­tected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sun­set years telling our chil­dren and our children’s chil­dren what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

“These men and women memo­ri­al­ized here today have demon­strated the great­est love of all; they’ve given their lives for their fel­low man,” Tiberi said. “To the Gold Star par­ents and other fam­ily mem­bers, on behalf of the res­i­dents of the 12th Dis­trict of the State of Ohio, I’m hon­ored to be here to give trib­ute to your sons and daugh­ters, and promise that we will never for­get those who gave it all and paid the ulti­mate price.”

Gold Star wife Tri­cia Eng­lish is the mother of three sons and the widow of United States Army Capt. Shawn English.

“We were called to be mem­bers of a club none of us ever wanted to be part of; it will never go away,” Eng­lish said. “But in time good mem­o­ries take over. I’m for­tu­nate today that I can look at my three boys and see their dad.”

Eng­lish noted that this Sep­tem­ber is the 11th anniver­sary of the 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks that claimed 3,497 Amer­i­can lives on their own soil.

“Like me, I’m sure every per­son here can remem­ber where he or she was on 9/11,” Eng­lish said. “I was a mil­i­tary wife in Vir­ginia prepar­ing to leave for church that morn­ing. My hus­band was an Army diver, and I knew what this would mean to our fam­ily and we began to pre­pare for deployment.”

In March of 2002 Amer­ica went to war, Eng­lish said; and for the last 10 years less than 1 per­cent of Amer­i­cans have been pro­tect­ing our way of life to keep our soil free.

“On Decem­ber 3, 2006, in an instant I went from being a mil­i­tary wife to a mil­i­tary widow, from being a co-parent to a sin­gle par­ent; and what I’ve come to real­ize is the inten­tion of those ter­ror­ists 11 years ago has failed,” Eng­lish said. “Amer­ica came together. Peo­ple of every race, creed and color com­ing together defines what it means to be an American.”

For more infor­ma­tion about the Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial go to < ohiofallenheroes.org >.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.