I took this picture in 2007 and it’s one of my all-time favorites. Airman Bill Long stands in salute as a mournful “Taps” sounds from a single trumpet at the graveside services for Long’s brother, local hero Spc. Braden Joseph Long Sunday afternoon at Cedarlawn Memorial Park in Sherman.

Spc. Long was killed in battle in Iraq Aug. 4, 2007. In the background is an honor-guard detail from the Sherman Police Department for this local hero, also standing in salute and further back is part of the line of Patriot Guard surrounding the grave site holding U.S. flags. Members or the Sherman Fire Department were also present to honor Sherman’s fallen warrior and local hero.

The story of Spc. Braden Joseph Long, by Joyce Godwin/Herald Democrat:

A 2005 graduate of Sherman High School, he is remembered for his infectious smile, love of cars, love for his family and the intense desire to serve his country. 

Spc. Long died of injuries sustained when his Humvee came under grenade attack in Baghdad Aug. 4, just three days shy of his 20th birthday. He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

During his short military career, Spc. Long earned the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Combat Action Badge, Iraqi Campaign Medal and Global War on Terrorism Medal. He served as a gunner.

Chaplain Ken Sorenson told mourners at Faith Church of Sherman that one of the outstanding features of Spc. Long was his smile. His father added in a later telephone interview that his son’s smile was always there. Sorenson used the letters in ‘smile’ to describe Spc. Long to family and friends who flocked to his funeral. ‘S’ was for Specialist, Braden’s army rank. ‘M’ was for military. He said Spc. Long wanted to join the military since he was a little boy. ‘I’ was for his intelligence in choosing a supportive wife like Teresa and for choosing the Army. ‘L’ stood for likeable. Sorenson said Spc. Long was an incredibly loving person. “I can see why Teresa would fall in love with him,” Sorenson said. 

Lastly, ‘E’ stood for excellence. He described Spc. Long as determined to do the right thing. He would always fulfill his commitments. 

Sorenson referred to the scripture Romans 5:7-8. “Christ died for us,” Sorenson said. “There is something about a man who is willing to die for those he doesn’t even know…day after day, a willingness to sacrifice his all for people who didn’t know him, much like his Savior did 2,000 years ago.” 

Later in the service, Sorenson said, “Freedom is never free and his (Spc. Long’s) death serves as a reminder of the cost.” 

Following the final prayer of the funeral, the cadence of marching military began to echo across the auditorium and grew louder as the military honor guard advanced through the church isle to retrieve Spc. Long’s casket. 

Mourners poured from the church and the unmistakable roar of motorcycle engines could be heard as the Patriot Guard prepared to escort Spc. Long and his family to Cedarlawn Memorial Park for the final farewell. This was the third part of the Guard’s mission for Spc. Long. 

Riders met the plane bearing Spc. Long’s casket at Grayson County Airport last Thursday and escorted him to Waldo Funeral Home in Sherman. Then the Guard stood in a protective formation around the funeral home during the family’s visitation Friday. 

With flags unfurled in the wind, the motorcycles escorted Spc. Long and his family and friends to Cedarlawn. 

As the procession passed each police sentry at various intersections on the procession route through Sherman, the officer sentry boarded his unit with lights flashing and joined the end of the procession until there were 10 cruisers bringing up the rear.

Sherman firefighters also honored the fallen hero with a U.S. flag suspended between two ladder trucks for the procession to pass under as it turned into Cedarlawn from Texoma Parkway. From that point, the procession stretched west on FM 691 all the way to U.S. Highway 75. 

Inside the funeral tent, the awards earned by Spc. Long were each presented to his wife, Teresa, his mother, Melanie Thrasher, and his father. 

When a mournful “Taps” sounded out from a single trumpet, military and police alike raise their hands in salute. Then Airman Bill Long, Spc. Long’s older brother who was sitting with the family, stood slowly, turned toward the ceremony and raised his salute. Airman Long, served as escort for his brother’s final return to Sherman. He was his mother’s support along with her husband, Bobby Thrasher, throughout the services. 

Hours after the funeral, Spc. Long’s father described their son as a normal teen while he was growing up. “But then, when you look back, you see a teen that almost never caused trouble,” William Long said. “He was focused in wanting to go into the Army and that’s what he did. He was a fantastic kid and a wonderful husband for his wife, and we are really going to miss him.” 

William Long commented on the military honors during his son’s service. “The amount of people that showed up was way beyond our expectations,” he added. “We knew the Patriot Guard was coming but we didn’t know how many there would be.” 

Sparky Cox of Sherman served as one of the Ride Captains for the Patriot Guard along with Mike Grove of Bells and Gary Winters of Sherman. Cox reported there were 129 motorcycles and several cars carrying Patriot Guard members who came from as far away as Waurika, Okla to the north and Fort Worth and Garland to the South. 

William Long said his son was doing what he wanted. “He wanted to join and signed up and enlisted right after his 17th birthday, but couldn’t go in for basic training until eight months later,” William Long said. “He was unbelievably proud to wear the uniform and his whole family was very proud of him.” 

Spc. Long was sworn into the Army Oct. 2, 2004. He left for basic training June 28, 2005 and did his basic training at Fort Knox, Ky. A Web site set up in his memory states he left for his first duty station, Ft. Riley, in Nov 2005. He was deployed to Iraq Feb 8, 2007. 

He is the fourth military personnel, and the fifth over all, from the Texoma area to die while serving in support of the war against terrorism. 

We’ve been pretty busy with our new baby and I feel bad I didn’t post anything about the 65th anniversary of D-Day. It’s important to me to honor our military men and women and our veterans. But, since I’ve been busy with family stuff, I’m just going to take a shortcut. I did a story in the Herald Democrat for D-Day and I’m just going to post that story here.

It was June 6, 1944 — D-Day. The size of the event, dubbed Operation Overlord, was unprecedented and remains the largest land, air and sea invasion in history. Planning for the orchestration began in December 1943 and the invasion served to be a turning point in the European campaign against Nazi Germany — a decisive day in history.

The Allied forces were led by Denison native Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. A transcript of Eisenhower’s encouraging speech to the troops before embarking on the landing is found at the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.. It follows:

“Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

“Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.

“But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!

“I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

“Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”

More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies had gained a foot-hold in Normandy.

Staff Sgt. Carl W. Fulmer of Tioga was wounded in the D-Day invasion, his son Bill Fulmer of Whitesboro said. Staff Sgt. Fulmer survived WWII until Sept. 27, 1944 in France. During the battle, a machine-gun operator was killed and Staff Sgt. Fulmer stepped up and took over its operation. “He was the main officer with his group; he could have told someone else to do that, but he stepped up himself,” explained Bill Fulmer. It was in this battle that Staff Sgt. Fulmer was killed.

During his military career, he earned two Purple Hearts and the Silver Star. He was one of five brothers who were in the war at the same time. He attended high school in Tioga, attended Indian Creek Church and is buried in the Tioga cemetery. He was a member of the 90th Infantry Division of the 359th Infantry Regiment attached to Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Another Grayson County son was Lt. Comdr.. James Earl Riley, a 1942 graduate of Sherman High School whose activity on D-Day was aboard one of the troop carriers. He was a “boat’s inmate,” reported his wife Wanda from Pensacola, Fla. He took the troops to Utah Beach. She said he never talked much about his experiences in WWII.

“He came back and went to Austin College and then became an officer,” she said. “He retired from the Navy after 28-and-a-half  years.”

Lt. Comdr. Riley also served in the Korean conflict as well as Vietnam. Mary Lueb of Sherman was a classmate of Riley’s and reported that he was a very dear friend. Others Grayson County boys she mentioned who were participants in the D-Day event are Pete Odum, Billy Painter and Billy Ray Fry.

Fry was a private first class for the Army when he departed the Higgins boat that delivered him to Omaha Beach in the first wave of the attack. His son, Judge James Fry of Sherman, said like so many other veterans of WWII, his father didn’t talk much about the experiences.

A member of the 29th Infantry Division, Pfc. Fry was not injured during the D-Day invasion but he was wounded about 10 days later when he was captured by the Germans. He remained a prisoner of war for about nine months before escaping with another POW with the assistance of a former Luftwaffe pilot. Judge Fry remembers that his dad came home in 1945.

“He told me very little about D-Day,” Jim Fry said. “When the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ came out, I called my dad and asked if he was going to see it. There was a long silence before he said, ‘Son, I spent 50 years trying to forget what happened on that beach, now why would I want to see that.’”

Jim Fry said his dad did eventually see the movie and he reported the scene that was the D-Day landing was pretty realistic. Billy Ray Fry died on the 60th anniversary of D-Day.

From the documentary movie “Voices of D-Day,” Thomas Valence, a rifle sergeant, tells how many of the troops got sick while moving toward the beach. He said the water was rough and choppy.

“As we came down the ramp, we were in water about knee high, and we started to do what we were trained to do — move forward, and then crouch and fire,” Valence said. “One of the problems was we didn’t quite know what to fire at.” He said men on either side of him were being “hit and put out of action so quickly that it became a struggle to stay on one’s feet.”

He reported how he abandoned his equipment that had become heavy and while floundering to get his balance he was shot through his left hand breaking a knuckle and again through the palm of his hand.

“I felt nothing but a little sting at the time, but I was aware that I was shot,” he said. “My rifle jammed, so I picked up a carbine and got off a couple of rounds. We were shooting at something that seemed inconsequential. There was no way I was going to knock out a German concrete emplacement with a .30-caliber rifle.

I was hit again, once in the left thigh, which broke my hip bone, and a couple of times in my pack, and then my chin strap on my helmet was severed by a bullet. I worked my way up onto the beach, and staggered up against a wall, and collapsed there. The bodies of the other guys washed ashore, and I was one live body amongst many of my friends who were dead and, in many cases, blown to pieces.”

More than 150,000 men were moved across the English Channel that day to the shores of France. Six parachute regiments, more than 13,000 men, were flown from nine British airfields in more than 800 planes. More than 300 planes dropped 13,000 bombs over coastal Normandy immediately in advance of the invasion.

By nightfall on June 6, more than 9,000 Allied soldiers were dead or wounded, but more than 100,000 had made it ashore, securing French coastal villages and beginning the march across Europe to defeat Hitler. 

Captured Germans were sent to American prisoner-of-war camps at the rate of 30,000 POWs per month from D-Day until December 1944. Thirty-three detention facilities were in Texas alone.

Saturday was June 6. It is a day to remember the valor, fidelity and sacrifice of this country’s “greatest generation.”

BONHAM — When 1st Sgt. Miguel Anthony Wilson, 36, said good-bye to his mother a month ago, he assured her he was happy in his job and proud of his missions and what he was doing in the military. He told her he knew there was danger and if something happened, he would want his family to celebrate his life and not mourn him.

But Friday, when a military detail, including a chaplain, came to her home in Bonham. The words they spoke to her seemed like a dream from which she thought she would awake any moment. They said her son died Friday in Abu Sayf, Iraq while he was rescuing another soldier. His mother learned later another soldier was drowning and her son jumped in to save him. “Later on we found out he did save him,” she said. “He didn’t take his gear off (when he jump in the water) which those back packs weigh 65 pounds. He just dived in and saved his fellow soldier and the weight of that back pack kept him under and then the current, they said, was strong and he drowned.”

Wanda Wilson said, the whole time the chaplain was speaking to her she just kept saying “no, no, no, no.” And, even now, though in her head she understands what happened, a little part of her still doesn’t believe it. “I don’t think it will become real to me until I go to the viewing and I know that is going to be hard for me,” she said.

First Sgt. Wilson was a 1990 graduate of Bonham High School where he was a member of the Warriors football team. His stepfather Vincent Neal says 1st Sgt. Wilson played corner back and running back. His father Michael Cooke, of Denison, remembers that Miguel stood out in soccer, played a little basketball and also ran track.

Wanda said through her tears, “Today, I’m fine. I’m not sad. I’m a very proud mother.”

His memorial service will be held Saturday at 1 p.m. at Fort Hood’s 19th Street Chapel with interment at Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen at 3 p.m.

A second memorial service will be held in Bonham at 3 p.m., Dec. 2 at the First Baptist Church of Bonham. The Patriot Guard Riders will serve as escorts for the family.