Marine earns rare honor with Bronze Star (Stephen Reagan)

You couldn't make out Stephen Reagan's feelings on Saturday just by looking at him.

A pair of dark glasses hid his eyes, and the most noticeable ripples across his tranquil, composed face were the discreet smiles his wife put on it.

But sitting at the fantail of the Battleship North Carolina, the Wilmington resident relived in his head the war episodes that earned him a Bronze Star Medal while taking from him some of his comrades.

"I thought about it a lot," Reagan said, after his best friend and fellow Marine Michael Neal read the citation that came with the medal.

At Saturday's ceremony, Reagan, a 25-year-old former sergeant with the Marine Corps, received a rare honor for his rank, said 1st Lt. Cameron Browne. His bravery during infantry combat in Iraq merited a Bronze Star Medal bearing a "V" for Valor, the fourth-highest honor of the U.S. Armed Forces.

"It's kind of humbling being here," Reagan said during his brief speech at the ceremony, clutching a box with the medal that Browne, his commander in Iraq, had just presented him.

Reagan said he wished more of his fellow fighters could have been there, but that there was nobody else he would rather have read the citation than Neal, who lived through the very ordeal he described in it.

"He was with me the whole time," Reagan said. "We'll do this again when he gets his (medal)."

Reagan was a Marine squad leader "in numerous engagements with the enemy in a complex counterinsurgency environment," the citation says.

That day, Reagan's squad was ambushed with an explosive device and gunfire. The attack destroyed one of his vehicles and trapped the wounded in the fire zone. Dodging the enemy's bullets, Reagan rushed to the burning vehicle, organizing search and rescue efforts.

Reagan's "quick thinking and bravery allowed the wounded to be quickly and safely evacuated from the scene," the citation says, commending him for "his zealous initiative, courageous actions and exceptional dedication to duty."

On Saturday, a few of his friends, his church's pastor, his wife Merilee Reagan and his parents, Shirley and William Reagan, gave him warm hugs.

His parents drove nine hours from West Virginia to be there for him. They are, of course, glad about his medal. They support his decision to go back into the Marines after a brief absence following three tours of duty, to Afghanistan, other places in the Middle East and then Iraq.

"I didn't know if he was going to come back or not," his father said, emotion chopping his words.

Stephen Reagan's mother says he will always be her "baby." She remembers a quiet, nice young boy who was so dedicated to Sunday school at his church that he never missed a day in 17 years.

His wife's eyes shone when she was next to him Saturday. He kept his arm around her the whole ceremony.

Stephen and Merilee Reagan married in June 2004, shortly after he returned from Afghanistan. They have been apart for long periods of time ever since.

"It's the hardest thing in the world, having your husband ripped away from you, coming home to an empty house every night,"she said. "On the other hand, it's what he loves to do. As long as he's happy, that's all I care about."

Reagan expects to be deployed again when he rejoins the Marine Corps in the near future, overcoming his harsh experience in Iraq.

"The last deployment was sort of overwhelming," he said. "We lost a lot of people. So I was just ready to get out."

The enormous number of truly amazing heroics demonstrated by our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the limited recognition of their actions frustrating. To my knowledge, not a single Medal of Honor has been issued to any living service member so far.

This is not in any way to diminish the issuance of posthumous decorations, but to point out a very important purpose to these medals.

These decorations are not given just for actions during conflict, to a single individual whose extraordinary efforts and bravery stand as an example to all their peers.

They are also from a grateful nation to the family of that service member. And to his community, his State, and to the nation itself for having produced him. It is not just to the individual, but for everyone in their life who helped contribute to their character.

And that citation is also issued, not just in remembrance of what happened, but so that for the rest of their lives, we will see such people walk among us, as living heroes, representatives of what is best in us. That all of us will see, and know, the presence of heroism. That it is real, and it still exists in our nation.

I live in Arizona, and there is a street here named after the World War II ace, and Medal of Honor recipient, Joe Foss. Though his home was in South Dakota, and he was even elected their governor, for a while he lived in Arizona.

He did some charitable work here, but that is not why he is remembered. He is remembered because of his Medal of Honor, which he felt duty bound to carry with him for the rest of his life. And no matter where he went, or what he did, he was identified almost exclusively by that citation. And even in the short time he lived here, we felt obligated to honor him, not as a man, but as a national treasure.

I say this because, en route to give a speech to cadets at West Point, at Sky Harbor airport, he was refused boarding permission to an aircraft, because of his Medal of Honor.
The security personnel feared that he might have used his Medal of Honor as a weapon to hijack the aircraft in a terrorist act.

Those ignorant thugs had never seen a Medal of Honor, nor had any idea as to its significance. And as sickening as their behavior, they are not alone. The vast majority of Americans have never seen a Medal of Honor, much less one worn by its recipient. They have no idea that it represents our national honor as much as our flag or our Constitution.

And this is why our nation needs living Medal of Honor recipients. Why those who wear the other citations, the Navy Cross, the Air Force Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver and Bronze Stars, and all the others, need to display these to all of us.

Our people need to see these decorations, and to know what they mean. Not just as a piece of metal and a ribbon, but as a recognition of character that endures, from one generation to the next. Character that deserves the highest recognition our nation can give.

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