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| SSG Jordan Bear |
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| PFC Payton Jones |
This Monday is Memorial Day, and I plan to spend the morning as I did last year, shooting the Memorial Day Fundraiser pistol match at Creekside Firing Range in Cartersville, Georgia. Each year for the past seven years, Joe Harris at Creekside has donated all the proceeds of the Memorial Day Fundraiser to the family of a fallen serviceman in the Atlanta area. The Fundraiser includes a steel challenge pistol match in the morning, an auction of shooting gear, and a tactical rifle match in the afternoon.
In addition, at 12:01 PM, I plan to go silent in honor of a fallen US serviceman.
The Iraq and Aghanistan Veterans of America are sponsoring this event, where you can pledge to remember an individual person, and make the moment personal.
I choose to remember two people - SSG Jordan Bear, age 25, of Denver, Colorado, and PFC Payton Jones, age 19, of Marble Falls, Texas.
Both served in Bravo Company of the 2nd Batallion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, and were killed March 1, 2012, at COP Sangesar, Afghanistan. You can read about their encounter in this New York Times article.
These men, this incident, and this newspaper article hit home for me, because my youngest brother is a SFC in the same unit. In fact, Lieutenant Davis, pictured in the article, is my brother's Platoon Leader. He has spoken at length with the NYT reporter who wrote this story.
Please consider going to this site and pledging to remember a fallen American.