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A Time to Remember: Gold Star Memorial unveiled at VA Center Memorial Day weekend ceremony

By William Kibler 4 min read

Carol Adams was at the pinnacle with two other mothers Saturday among guests of honor at a Memorial Day weekend ceremony at Van Zandt VA Medical Center, because she's a "Gold Star" mother -- one whose child died in military service during a time of conflict.

As such, Adams was accorded maximum respect, based on the death of her son, Sgt. Brandon Adams, in 2004, as a result of wounds incurred during combat in Iraq.

"(But) it's not a club you want to belong to," Adams said afterward, when describing what the wreath-laying and plaque-unveiling ceremony meant to her.

Nevertheless, it's good that her son and others like him are remembered at ceremonies like those on Saturday, Carol said.

Brandon was "kind of a tough kid," according to Adams.

Although he was "not a mean person," "he didn't let people push him around," she said.

He didn't seek out problems, but would stand up for others, she said.

He also "never took 'no' for an answer," she said.

He wrestled at Altoona Area Junior High School, and he turned down a college scholarship to enlist in the Army, she said.

Based on his test scores, he could have gone to any of the Army branches, but chose the infantry, he said.

He felt it was his duty, she said.

"He was very loyal to the U.S.," she said.

He was stationed in Alaska when 9/11 occurred.

"That tore him up," she said.

In order to increase the likelihood that he would end up in a war zone, he sought and obtained a transfer from his unit in Alaska to the 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, N.Y., she said.

And he was sent to Iraq in 2003.

His father had been in the Marines and his grandfather had been in the Navy, and that may have contributed to his desire to participate in combat, Adams said.

But it was probably more the result of his "psyche," she said.

He was wounded by a grenade while trying to clear a house in Fallujah on Feb. 16, 2004, according to a 2004 Military Times article on the occasion of his death.

He saw the grenade, turned, shoved his unit mates to the floor and got on top of them, his mother said Saturday.

Doctors in Baghdad took out six pieces of shrapnel from his head, but had to leave three pieces behind and had to take parts of his skull, according to the Military Times article.

He was shipped to a hospital in Germany, where his parents were also taken, so they could be with them, Adams said.

After a month, he was taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for six weeks, then to Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Va., for six more weeks, then in July, to Van Zandt in Altoona, she said.

He was conscious, and he knew who his parents were, but he couldn't speak, having a traumatic brain injury, Adams said.

He was improving slowly, and his mind was good and he had actually started to say a few words toward the end, according to his grandmother, as stated in the Military Times article.

But he died Sept. 19, back at Walter Reed, where he had gone to have metal plates put in his head, according to the Military Times.

He received a Bronze Star for his action in Fallujah.

He was born in Natrona Heights near Pittsburgh on Dec. 17, 1981, and was 22 when he died, according to his obituary.

He is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Altoona.

Saturday's event included wreath-layings by several delegations at the hospital's Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall replica, along with the unveiling of the second Gold Star Memorial plaque in Pennsylvania by the Blair Garden Club -- plus the laying of wreaths against the base of the standard that supports the new plaque.

The plaque -- Pennsylvania's first is in Patriot Park in Stoystown, Somerset County, near the Flight 93 National Memorial -- is not just to honor the service members who died, but also their survivors, who are necessarily far more numerous, said Emma Kowalski, Garden Club president.

Some families' pain is intense enough even after years they can't bear to participate in events like Saturday's, according to Kowalski.

He never realized the "weight of the sacrifice(s)" that have been made by service members who died in combat until he himself was wounded -- like Brandon Adams by a grenade in Iraq -- in 2009, said keynote speaker Matt Gibbons, a Van Zandt case manager.

After their deaths, that weight is carried by parents, spouses, siblings, children and friends, Gibbons said.

Ultimately, Memorial Day is not about death, but sacrifice, Gibbons said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.

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