Remembering and honoring CPL Matthew J Stanley ~ NH Hero

Remembering and honoring CPL Matthew J Stanley,
US Army Scout – 1-7 Cavalry
KIA Taji Iraq 12/16/06

Following is written by his Mom, Lynn:

Matt was a fun loving guy. Sometimes I think Matt’s whole purpose on this earth was to make people smile. He himself always had a smile on his face. Everyone who knew Matt will tell you about that smile. I watched Matt mature from a young boy into a brave young man. His courage and bravery still astonishes me. He had a great love for his family and his country and a great zest for life. In my attempts to honor Matt, I remember to keep his fun loving spirit alive, his joy for life and his love.

In 2002, Matt graduated from Kingswood Regional High School where he was well known and well liked by his peer and teachers. He was outgoing and deeply proud and personal about his two tours of duty in Iraq. He always had a good circle of friends. He was the type of kid that everybody wanted for a friend. Matt had been married less than a year.

Matt married his beautiful wife Amy on December 31, 2005. Such a wonderful time for the whole family to be together. Little did we know that Matt would be gone before his first anniversary

He was killed along with four others by an IED when the hummer he was in ran over it. That year he missed his birthday on December 26 and his anniversary. Matt is dearly missed by his family and by everyone who knew him.

Remembering CPT Kyle Van De Giesen ~ NH Hero

Remembering CPT Kyle Van De Giesen, KIA 10/26/09, by a collision between a UH-1 and an AH-1 helicopter at FOB Dwyer, Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom, Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 169, Marien Aircraft Group 393rd Marine Aircraft Wing. 1 Marine Expeditionary Force.

Sharing the following from his wife Megan:

Megan Van De Giesen was counting on her husband to be home from his seven-month deployment in Afghanistan for the birth of their second child. Marine Captain Kyle Van De Giesen had flown his last mission and couldn’t wait to be home, either. Soon he would be with Megan, nearly nine months pregnant, and their daughter, Avery, almost 18 months old. When last he’d seen them, Megan had just learned she was expecting and Avery was taking her first steps. Upon his return, the family planned to move to Yuma, Ariz., where he had been chosen for the prestigious post of teaching weapons and tactics at the Marine Corps Air Station. It was, his mom notes with pride, the Marine equivalent of “Top Gun.’’

On a Thursday night in October 2009, Megan and Kyle were able to Skype. “He asked me to lift up my shirt so he could see my belly,’’ says Megan. “He could also see Avery running around, building with blocks. She said, ‘Hi Daddy!’ ’’

Three days later, Megan was awakened at midnight to six Marines knocking at the door of the couple’s apartment near Camp Pendleton, Calif. – the same doorway where she had kissed her husband goodbye when he left nearly nine months earlier. Captain Van De Giesen, 29, a highly decorated helicopter pilot, was dead, killed in a crash in Helmand province. The family would later learn that he had been asked at the last minute to fill in for another pilot on a night mission.

Megan Van De Giesen, who grew up in Walpole, flew back east for the funeral and didn’t return to the apartment where the couple had spent happy months with other Marine families. “I never wanted to go back to that home where I heard the news,’’ she says. Other Marine wives packed up her belongings and shipped them to her.

Four days after Kyle Van De Giesen was buried in the Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne, his son, Colin Joseph, was born.

“Kyle said Afghanistan was a different beast, it was rough over there and communication was harder,’’ recalls Megan as she keeps an eye on Colin, now an active toddler and a miniature of his dad, down to the cowlicks on each side of his head. She and the children live in Franklin, not far from Kyle’s father, Calvin. On a recent day, they are at her mother-in-law’s home in North Attleboro, where Kyle grew up with two brothers and a sister.

Both Calvin and RuthAnn Van De Giesen, have found solace in the grandchildren and, along with Kyle’s siblings, see them often. It is, says his mother, the one unexpected blessing.

“We have beautiful children to raise and take care of, and for that we are grateful,’’ says RuthAnn, who keeps Avery and Colin every Thursday night and Friday, Colin sleeping in his father’s old bedroom. “We have babies to raise. We have to stay happy.’’ Megan and the children also spend time on the Cape with her parents, Paul and Pamela Francis.

And the entire family finds meaning in the Captain Kyle Rolf Van De Giesen Memorial Award Fund, which supports students who uphold the Marine Corps values of honor, courage, and commitment.

After his family, the thing Kyle Van De Giesen loved most was the Marine Corps. As a boy, he had been fascinated by helicopters and later was thrilled to be flying for the Marines. At St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., he enrolled in an officers training program and was commissioned as a second lieutenant two weeks after he graduated in 2002. He felt it was his calling.

He excelled in flight school and got his first pick: to fly Cobra helicopters on the West Coast. To prepare for deployment, he would fly day and night, in all kinds of weather. His favorite route was up the coast over the water, where, he told Megan, he could spot sharks. The military life, with its structure and discipline, suited him. He liked precision; his DVDs were in alphabetical order, his closet pristine.

A senior in college on Sept. 11, 2001, he called his mother, distraught, as he watched the terrorist attacks. “Why can’t anyone do something to stop this?’’ he asked her. He was already headed for a military career, but the events of 9/11 gave him more motivation. “It only made him want to work harder,’’ says Megan.

Megan Francis met Kyle Van De Giesen at a game of ultimate Frisbee the summer he graduated from college. It was an instant take, the handsome young man with the emerald eyes and the blue-eyed brunette who stood a foot shorter. When he trained in Florida and California, she accompanied him.

One evening in October 2006, as they sat on the beach near Camp Pendleton, he proposed. Ten hours later, he left for Iraq. They married when he returned the following May. She was 26, Kyle 27.

Five months later, just as Megan learned she was pregnant, he deployed again to Iraq, arriving home soon after Avery was born. He was delighted with fatherhood, prancing around the squadron room with Avery to show her off. As he was about to leave for Afghanistan, the couple learned that they were expecting another baby.

To Kyle, war was a job, not a political issue. He felt he was protecting his family and his country. “He loved every single moment of being in the Marine Corps,’’ says his father. “He never once gave me his political views.’’ On his left wrist, Calvin Van De Giesen wears an orange rubber bracelet that says: “KRV-Our Hero Forever.’’ He never takes it off, even when ordered to during a recent surgery. “He died doing what he loved and in his mind, it was all good,’’ says Van De Geisen. “It’s all good,’’ was the phrase Kyle used with his loved ones, to reassure them that things were going well.

Though he didn’t express his views about war, his widow has hers. “Sometimes, I think he died before anything was done in Afghanistan,’’ says Megan. “I just want to make sure progress has been made before we leave, and Kyle and others haven’t died in vain.’’

With help from the Marine Corps and a fund set up for the family, the children’s financial futures are secure. Megan has gone into an event planning and catering business with a friend. But the kids are obviously her focus. “It’s very, very important to me that they know who Daddy was and what he did,’’ she says.

At 3, Avery is getting inquisitive. She’ll point to helicopters overhead and say, “That’s my daddy!’’ She won’t go to bed without kissing her father’s picture. Already, Colin cocks his arm and releases a mini-football; his father was a star quarterback at North Attleboro High.

In some ways, Megan says, it’s a blessing that they won’t feel the pain of losing a father they didn’t get to know. “But someday, they may feel the sorrow of not meeting him,’’ she says, wiping away tears. Last October, on the first anniversary of his death, family and friends all over the country got onto Skype and saluted Captain Van De Geisen with his favorite drink, a shot of Jack Daniels and Coke. They plan to do the same next month, at the two-year mark.

His mother keeps a couple of “It’s all good,’’ signs in her home, and says she was at peace when she learned of his death. “Everything he wanted to accomplish, he had accomplished. He was flying, he had the wife he wanted, he had the babies. I could hear him saying, ‘Mom, it’s all good.’ ’’

Remembering and Honoring LCpl “PJ” Sora ~ NH Hero

Remembering and honoring LCpl “PJ” Sora – Killed 5-4-04

Following is from his dad, Peter:

“PJ was a LCPL in the Marine Corps, and was tragically killed in a HUMVEE roll over at 29 Palms, California, while preparing for deployment to Iraq with his weapons company.
I not sure most Americans are aware of how many of our service members are killed each year as a result of training exercises or non hostile circumstances. I do know this… PJ was an exemplary Marine who had many options in life, but chose the Marine Corps, and volunteered for assignment to a weapons company 3/5 that was headed to Fallujah in the fall of 2004. Even though he never made it to Iraq, he gave his life at age 19 in the battle against terrorism just as surely as if Osama Bin Laden had shot him.
I miss him beyond words, and I promise him each week when I visit his gravesite (NH Vets Cemetery), that I will keep his memory alive as best I can.”

PJ loved all types of music. He was captain of the Londonderry High Wrestling Team. He was also a 1st degree Black Belt. Despite showing toughness as a wrestler and a Marine, he was a pensive and sensitive young man who loved his young nephews and nieces.

This is from his sister, Melissa “I am so grateful for the years we had, your wisdom, kindness, generous sole, the hero you were and so much more. Miss you every day PJ. So grateful for being blessed with you and to have you as my brother. Thank you for letting me know you are near through my kid’s eyes and actions every day. You are always with us! Love you!!

To remember is to honor….

 

Remembering SGT William Tracy ~ NH Hero

Remembering SGT William Tracy – Killed on 2/25/03 in a UH-60 Black Hawk – crashed in a sandstorm during training in Kuwait.  He was assigned to B Company, 5th Battalion, 158^th Aviation, Aviano Air Base, Italy.

William graduated from Merrimack Valley High School in 1993 and spent one semester pursuing his love of art at a local school before enlisting in the Marines.  After four years, he returned home for a short time before joining the Army to fly helicopters.  He was a crew chief; he fixed the aircraft on the ground and helped pilots navigate in the air.  William was a soldier to the core, volunteering for every mission.  His deployments ranged from Atlas Drop, Tunisia; Flintlock, Mali, Strong Resolve, Norway; Lariat Response, Hungary; Victory Strike III, Poland; and Enduring Freedom, Kuwait.  He loved to travel and rarely stayed home on weekends.  He remained close to his family through e-mail and long telephone calls.  He loved meeting people from around the world and brought toys and gifts with him so they would think well of the United States and its soldiers.

May God be with his family and give them comfort and peace.  Never forget.

TO REMEMBER IS TO HONOR….

NH Chapter appoints new Director

There are some new and exciting changes in the NH Chapter! Bill Geary, Gold Star Uncle has been appointed the new director of Honor and Remember New Hampshire Chapter,  together with Paul Boore, Veteran and Jim Savage, Gold Star Father and Veteran will be Co-Directors.

We have all worked hard over the past 2 and half years and have been through 2 years of working with legislation.  So…2014 – that will be the year!!!

I will still be on the NH Chapter, working with Gold Star families, flag presentations,  etc. I am so honored to have been entrusted with being the Director for the past few years!

Love you all!!!

NH will never forget!

Blessings,

Susan