[ MEMORIAL DAY ]
Junior ROTC students from Radford and Moanalua high schools stood at ease during Memorial Day services held at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl yesterday.
After the loss
Memorial Day holds special
significance for families with
loved ones killed in Iraq
For Brandy Williams, life is "getting back into some sort of routine" more than a year after husband, Army Sgt. Eugene Williams, became the first soldier with Hawaii ties to be killed in Iraq.
CORRECTION
Saturday, June 5, 2004Junior ROTC students from Kahuku, Castle and Kaiser high schools participated Sunday in services at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl. A photo caption on Page A1 Monday incorrectly said students from Radford and Moanalua took part.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin strives to make its news report fair and accurate. If you have a question or comment about news coverage, call Editor Frank Bridgewater at 529-4791 or email him at corrections@starbulletin.com.
"I don't think it will ever be normal," Williams said, "but it's as normal as it can be without him."
Army 1st Lt. Christine Tadeo Wolfe lost her husband, 1st Lt. Jeremy Wolfe, on Nov. 15, 2003, in a helicopter crash in Mosul. Jeremy Wolfe, commissioned through the University of Hawaii ROTC program in 2002, was piloting one of two Black Hawk helicopters that collided after being hit by a rocket. Wolfe and 16 other 101st Airborne Division soldiers, including Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Bolor, a former Lahaina resident, died in the crash.
This fall, Christine Wolfe, a 1995 Farrington High School graduate, will be sent to Iraq as a battalion communications officer with the 3rd Infantry Division.
"Nobody wants to die," said Wolfe, who met her husband while they were candidates at the UH ROTC program. "It's something that makes our job different than other jobs. We take an oath and we know what our job entails.
"I do what the Army says," she told the Star-Bulletin from her home at Fort Campbell, Ky. "... but it's harder knowing what happened to my husband."
Legacy survives as life follows death
Brandy Williams was pregnant with the couple's second child when her husband was killed by a suicide bomber along with three other 17th Infantry Regiment soldiers on March 29, 2003. Monica Shyann Williams was born nearly three months later, on June 6.This Memorial Day, as she did last year, Brandy Williams will take her two daughters -- 4-year-old Mya and 11-month-old Monica Shyann -- to a small knoll at Mililani Memorial Park that looks down on Pearl Harbor to have a quiet lunch and place flowers at her husband's bronze-colored headstone.
Christine Wolfe has asked her in-laws to place flowers at her husband's grave in Menomonie, Wis., where he grew up.
Ten soldiers, including Williams, Wolfe and Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Bolor, and one civilian with island ties have been killed since the war started in March 2003.
Of the 11 deaths, 10 were due to hostile action. One 25th Infantry Division soldier was killed in Afghanistan this year.
On Saturday, Bolor, 37, born and raised in Lahaina, was remembered by the Maui Americans of Japanese Ancestry when his photo was placed in their veterans hall in Lahaina. On Nov. 15, he was the first Hawaii-born native to die in Iraq in the largest single loss of American life since major combat ended May 1, 2003.
Williams was assigned to Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division when he was killed. A suicide bomber, posing as a taxicab driver, pulled up close to a roadblock north of Najaf and waved to the troops for help. Williams had been assigned to the 25th Infantry Division when he met Brandy and the two were married in 1999.
Brandy Williams, a 1995 Sacred Hearts Academy graduate, still plans to get a college degree. "I still want to be a teacher or something along that line in education," she said.
But, now, she can only work part-time at nights when her mother can baby-sit her two young children.
Williams said she still keeps in contact with wives of 3rd Infantry Division soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia. "I went back for a visit in February," Williams said. "I met with some of his friends of his old company."
"But there is like an unwritten boundary," Williams added. "We never talk about our husbands or the possibility they may have to leave again."
While in Georgia she attended a memorial service. "They planted trees for all of the soldiers who died," she said. "They planted a rose bud tree next to a plaque with his name."
Memorial Day hits home
For Conrad Bolor, whose brother, Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Bolor, was among 17 soldiers killed in November when two U.S. helicopters were shot down, Memorial Day this year really "hits home.""Normally, at this time we remember our loved ones," said Conrad Bolor. "Now it's Kelly who fought and died in the war."
Kelly Bolor, who served in Desert Storm in 1991, was about to be promoted to supervisor in his public works job in Los Angeles County when he was activated with the Army Reserve's 137th Quartermaster Company, which was attached to the 101st Airborne Division. His widow, Kelly, and their 3-year-old son, Kyle, live in Whittier, Calif.
Scholarship raised
In Wisconsin, a scholarship fund has been started to honor Jeremy Wolfe, 27, at Colfax High School where he ran track, his wife said. "He loved to run and entered all the races in Hawaii," Christine Wolfe said.In August, she and several of her close friends in the Army will return to Menomonie to participate in an annual motorcycle ride that was re-named "Jeremy's Ride."
And in her window at her Fort Campbell home hangs a blue star banner, a simple white rectangle banner with large red borders with a dark blue star representing a family member serving in the armed forces.
Only now a gold star has been added to honor a fallen soldier.
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Terror war claims lives
of 12 with isle tiesTen soldiers and one civilian with Hawaii ties have been killed in Iraq since the war started in March 2003. Of the 11 deaths, 10 were due to hostile action. One soldier was killed in Afghanistan.
Iraq | 2004
March 18: Pfc. Ernest Sutphin, 21, of Parkersburg, W.Va., was one of seven soldiers riding in a Humvee during a night patrol in Al Hawija on March 11 when the vehicle rolled into a canal. He was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery of the 25th Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, stationed at Schofield Barracks. He was taken off life support on March 18.March 31: Wesley Batalona, 48, was one of four American contractors killed in Fallujah. Their bodies were burned and two were hung from a bridge. Batalona was killed when a vehicle he was in was hit by rocket-propelled grenades. He and the three other American victims were working for Moycock, N.C.-based Blackwater Security.
April 4: Spec. John Amos II, 20, was killed after an explosive device hit his military vehicle in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Amos, of Valparaiso, Ind., was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. He had been in Iraq for two months.
May 1: Staff Sgt. Oscar D. Medina, 32, of Chicago; and Spc. Ramon C. Ojeda, 22, of Ramona, Calif., were killed around 7 p.m. south of Al Amarah when their convoy was attacked. Both soldiers were assigned to the 25th Infantry Division's 84th Engineer Battalion.
May 2: Staff Sgt. Todd E. Nunes, 29, of Chapel Hills, Tenn., died in Kirkuk when his convoy encountered an improvised explosive device and small arms fire. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment. Ten soldiers in his unit were wounded.
2003
March 30: Sgt. Eugene Williams, a former 25th Infantry Division soldier whose wife and two children live in Wahiawa, was killed by a suicide bomber at a roadblock north of Najaf. Williams was assigned to the 3rd Division when he was killed.Sept. 1: Staff Sgt. Cameron Sarno, 43, a member of the Army Reserve's 257th Transportation Company in Las Vegas, was sideswiped by a truck while changing a tire in Kuwait. Sarno formerly lived in Waipahu.
Nov. 7: Chief Warrant Officer Sharon T. Swartworth, 43, an official in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, was killed when the Black Hawk helicopter in which she had been a passenger was shot down. She was planning to retire in Mililani at the end of the year.
Nov. 15: Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Martin Liberato Bolor, a Maui resident, was killed in the collision of two Black Hawk helicopters. Bolor was one of 17 101st Airborne Division soldiers killed in the largest single loss of American life in Iraq since major combat ended May 1, 2003.
Nov. 15: 2nd Lt. Jeremy L. Wolfe, 27, of Menomonie, Wis., was a pilot of one of the Black Hawks that crashed. He graduated from Hawaii Pacific University in 2002 and was commissioned through the University of Hawaii Army ROTC program.
Afghanistan | 2004
May 1: Spc. Phillip L. Witkowski, 24, of Fredonia, N.Y., died in Homberg, Germany, from non-combat related injuries sustained on April 30, in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Spc. Witkowski was assigned to the 7th Field Artillery.
