Community reaches out to Beverly soldier's family

Local News

Discussion

The Salem News has a real-name policy for commenting. Users may sign in using the Facebook Connect tool above the comments field. Once your first comment is posted by a moderator, all future comments will post automatically. If you prefer not to use Facebook, send an e-mail with your comments user name (which must be the same as your real name), city or town, street address and daytime phone number to comments@salemnews.com. A staff member will contact you directly to confirm your identity. It may take a day or two before you can post comments. Only your user name will be public. All users are required to follow our rules for commenting, which can be found here.

comments powered by Disqus

October 17, 2008

Paul Leighton The Salem News Fri Oct 17, 2008, 11:39 PM EDT

BEVERLY — Offers of condolences and support continued to pour in to the family of Army Spc. Stephen Fortunato yesterday as the community coped with the city’s first wartime casualty since the Vietnam War.

Elizabeth Crawford said she has been visited by strangers who feel compelled to pay tribute to her son, while the city’s veterans’ agent said he had fielded at least 50 telephone calls offering assistance as the family prepares for next week’s military funeral in Beverly.

“The outpouring has been tremendous,” veterans’ agent Jerry Guilebbe said.

The 25-year-old Fortunato and two other soldiers died Tuesday of wounds suffered when a bomb destroyed their military vehicle in Qazi Bandeh, Afghanistan.

Also killed were Spc. Cory Bertrand, 18, of Center, Texas, and Preston Medley, 23 of Baker, Fla., according to the Department of Defense. All three were members of the 1st Infantry Division based at Fort Hood, Texas.

Fortunato’s body was flown yesterday to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where an autopsy will be performed. The body will then be flown to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and driven to Fortunato’s hometown of Beverly.

The funeral has been scheduled for Friday at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in downtown Beverly, with burial at St. Mary’s Cemetery on Brimbal Avenue. The wake is scheduled for Thursday at the Campbell, Lee, Moody, Russell Funeral Home.

Fortunato will be given a full military funeral, his mother said, including a military honor guard carrying the flag-draped casket. A group known as the Patriot Guard Riders will escort the casket from Hanscom Air Force Base to Beverly and will also be at the funeral, Crawford said. The volunteer group of motorcycle riders offers protection against protesters at military funerals.

“Stephen would not want all this, but he deserves it,” his mother said.

Guilebbe said Beverly and Danvers firefighters have offered to hang large American flags from the top of their ladder trucks as the funeral procession passes underneath. Local veterans groups volunteered to send honor guards while the Beverly High School Junior ROTC program has offered to post a guard outside Crawford’s Cleveland Road home, where she lives with Stephen’s two younger brothers.

Yesterday, flags flew at half-staff outside Beverly City Hall and at Veterans Memorial at Odell Park near the train station.

At New England Biolabs, where Crawford worked as a customer service representative for 27½ years until retiring last month, workers draped an American flag over the railing in the lobby of their Ipswich headquarters and placed photographs of Stephen around an arrangement of red, white and blue flowers.

Crawford said her former co-workers prepared a refrigerator full of meals for her family and are sending people to rake her yard, mow her lawn and clean her house.

“They said, ‘Let us do this for you,’” she said.

Crawford said a married couple with a son in Iraq came to her house with flowers. Another man stopped by with a bagful of small American flags and planted them around the perimeter of her front yard.

The loss of Fortunato and his two fellow soldiers brings the U.S. military death toll to 542 since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, according to the Defense Department.

Jake Petronzio, a retired U.S. Marine whose son is now serving in Afghanistan, said the loss of any American soldier is a blow, “but naturally when it’s in your hometown it amplifies that hurt feeling.”

Col. Peter Petronzio, Jake’s son, is the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit that has been fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan since April.

“I’m sure if Peter reads a casualty report and he sees that a Fortunato from Beverly is killed in action, I’m sure it’s going to resonate with him because he knows the family and he knows they’re very well-known,” Jake Petronzio said.

Jake Petronzio fought in the Korean War and knows firsthand the dangers of combat. News of the death of a Beverly soldier, in the same country where his son is fighting, only heightens the anxiety, he said.

“Naturally, you’re concerned 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “It comes home when the person who is the casualty could be your next-door neighbor.”

Fortunato, a 2002 Beverly High School graduate, joined the Army in August 2005 as an infantryman and was sent to Afghanistan in July of this year.

According to the Department of Defense, his military awards and decorations include the Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and Iraq Campaign Medal.

Text Only | Photo Reprints

Local News

Search Results

Discussion

Community reaches out to Beverly soldier's family

Site Map

Reader Access