Brownsville honors 9/11 victims, soldier
BROWNSVILLE – “Mother, I want to be a soldier.” The declaration came from a young man who knew what he wanted in life, Sandy Rafferty Hustava told those gathered Saturday to pay tribute to her son who lost his life on the battlefield in Afghanistan in August, the victims of Sept. 11, 2001, and the scores of soldiers that have laid down their lives to protect their country, like 1st Sgt. Christopher C. Rafferty.
“I laughed and told him he was only 16,” recalled Hustava. “And again, he said, ‘Mother, I want to be a soldier.'”
Veterans, firefighters, emergency responders, marching bands, classic car and horse owners, along with Scouting organizations, paraded through the flag-lined streets of Brownsville and were applauded by those who took part in the afternoon festivities at the South Brownsville Volunteer Fire Hall on Water Street.
Rafferty, said his mother, heeded her early words to “do well” and excelled at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, becoming the youngest drill sergeant at the U.S. Army installation.
“I remember going to his (military) graduation ceremony and hearing this voice behind me calling out my name,” said Hustava. “I turned, and there he was in his clean, pressed, dress greens; no longer a boy, but a man.”
The Bethlehem-Center High School graduate was just a year shy of retirement from the U.S. armed forces when shrapnel struck him in the neck.
“He saved three other soldiers that day,” said Hustava. “He had gone to check on his men to make sure they were OK.
“He turned and he was hit. He died before they were able to get him to medical services.”
Jack Lawver, Brownsville Borough Council president, said that the death of a soldier from one’s hometown makes a person realize that freedom comes with a “very high cost.”
Lawver had joined with others throughout the morning to read the names of the more than 2,200 U.S. service men and women that have lost their lives in the war on terror.
“Since the first alarm went off on Sept. 11, 2001, the lives of 6,000 families and communities have been changed tragically,” he said. “But you don’t have a full understanding of the price of freedom until it hits home.”
The images of the airliners crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon and the Somerset County field on that fateful day five years ago, remain vivid, said Ron Barry, captain of the South Brownsville Fire Department.
With his helmet close to his side, in tribute to the 343 firefighters that lost their lives, Barry said at no time in history have so many died in response to a single emergency. “Tim Stackpole, Ray Downey, Thomas Houlihan were sons, fathers and brothers,” said Barry of some of the fallen firefighters. “Their memory will live on in what we do.”
State Rep. H. William DeWeese (D-Waynesburg) said that like those on Sept. 11, 2001, who stepped forward to save others, so did the young Brownsville native.
He likened Rafferty’s service to his country to that of an early naval officer, John Paul Jones, who when asked in 1776 by the members of the Colonial Congress where he intended to go, responded, “in harm’s way.”
“Christopher Rafferty went in harm’s way,” said DeWeese. “The last full measure of devotion that this young sergeant exemplified was in those far away dusty mountains of Afghanistan, so that some how, some way the God-fearing, patriotic folks of places like Brownsville, Pennsylvania, could enjoy a happy, late summer afternoon.”
Brownsville Mayor Lewis Hosler, who spearheaded the event, recounted several personal stories of his tour of duty in Vietnam and said that the service to their country by local residents should be memorialized with a monument.
“We’re going to build one,” he said. “It may take us five or 10 years, but we’re going to have one.”
Also taking part in the ceremony were Gold Star Mothers Virginia Cassin and Hazel Camino, who both lost sons in the Vietnam War; the Rev. Paul Sandusky, pastor of the First Christian Church of Browns-ville; Magisterial District Judge Michael DeFino; soloist Taylor Williams; the Browns-ville High School Marching Band; Vietnam veteran Andy Gira and American Legion Posts 295, 940 and 838.