Photo By Capt. Eric Hudson | This bronzed pair of boots will be awarded to the unit with the most participation....... read more read more
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FORT HOOD, Texas – Staff Sgt. Joyce Lo Baido got rid of her boots as soon as she could after her deployment. Not because they were uncomfortable. In fact, she wore them every day. She was even wearing them the day Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Kantor passed away.
Lo Baido was a team member working on a medical evacuation Black Hawk for 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Brigade when they picked up the Navy Seal.
“While we were going back [to the hospital] my medic and another seal were doing CPR,” she said. “I was doing the ventilator, rubbing his hair as much as I could to comfort him.”
Working on a medevac Lo Baido was used to tragedy, but Kantor was in his early 20’s and reminded her of one of her sons.
“I just had a premonition it wasn’t going to be OK,” she said. “I knew a mother was going to get bad news.”
The thought of Kantor stayed with Lo Baido. Once she returned from deployment to Wheeler Army Airfield in Hawaii, she wanted to do something. She knew the Fisher House there was doing a memorial run and was collecting boots. She donated the boots she was wearing while comforting Kantor and wrote him a note.
Part of that note reads:
“I will never forget you. I carry a part of you with me daily. These are the boots I was wearing the day you came into my life. I give them so you know, as well as others, that you will never be forgotten.”
On Nov. 1, 2014 the Fort Hood Fisher House will recreate that same memorial at Sadowski Field with a Hero & Remembrance Run, Walk or Roll. The event begins at 6 a.m. and the course will be lined with donated boots accompanied by photos of nearly every fallen service member since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Fisher House is asking for donations of boots to include in the display. It is also seeking volunteers to help set up the boots prior to the event.
For Theresa Johnson, manager for the Fort Hood Fisher House and founder of this memorial, this is personal. In April of 2007, Pfc. Tim Vimoto was killed in action.
“He used to hang out in our house all the time,” she said. “He was like a fourth child for us, and he was from a really great family.”
Vimoto deployed with his father, a command sergeant major.
“He [the father] probably told his wife, I’ll bring him home. But he probably never added the word safely,” said Johnson, a native of Hennepin, Ill.
Johnson was in a similar situation in 2012 when her own son was scheduled to deploy – his father was also a command sergeant major.
“I really just had it on my heart to do something for Tim,” she said. “I knew my chances of me being there as a gold star mom are just as good as any other parent who sends their child off, so I thought I really just wanted to do something.”
And that is when the idea for the original memorial in Hawaii was born. Once the run is finished, the boots are scheduled to be on display in front of the III Corps building until Veterans Day.
“You are going to see a sea of 7,000 service members who have lost their lives since 9/11 memorialized with the boots,” said Johnson. “Whether it was down range, whether it was suicide, or whether it was a training incident.”
Currently, the Fisher House has collected more than 600 boots and is accepting donations to make sure every fallen service member is represented. If it falls short of its goal, each service member’s photo will still be on display without a boot.
Candace Ualesi took the time to decorate and donate a pair of boots for this run in Hawaii to honor a family friend from Hawaii that died while deployed.
“We had someone take a boot and paint a Polynesian design all over it,” she said.
This annual memorial began at Pearl Harbor on historic Ford Island in 2012. Fort Campbell will also support a memorial run on Nov. 1 and there are plans to expand the memorial to include Fort Bragg next year.
Johnson said the event is emotional for many in attendance. “When you lose someone downrange you don’t have time to process it,” she said. “You do the memorial service and you stay in the fight. So when they come back, they deal with their PTSD because they haven’t really been able to process it. For some reason, even though it’s not that Soldier’s original boot, knowing that somebody took the time to do that and for them to have something tangible to come and hold is helpful.”
To donate boots, drop them off at the Fisher House near the Santa Fe Gate. For more information, contact Johnson at (931)217-0800 or Theresa.m.johson2@us.army.mil. To register for the event visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ft-hood-fisher-house-hero-remembrance-run-walk-or-roll-2014-tickets-11922014065.
| Date Taken: | 10.02.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 10.08.2014 13:50 |
| Story ID: | 144611 |
| Location: | KILLEEN, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 308 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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