Final Ride Home for Marine Ronald Freeman: Brandon Reacts

People had their own reasons for taking a break from the daily routine to line the streets of Brandon on May 4, in the late afternoon, to pay their respects to a fallen hero of Operation Enduring Freedom.

For some, the decision to witness Lance Cpl. Ronald Freeman’s final ride home had been carefully thought out in advance.

For others living, working and shopping in Brandon, paying tribute to the Plant City High School graduate and young father, who died in Afghanistan on April 26, had come on a whim, having witnessed others standing with flags, large and small, on the side of road for the Brandon leg of the journey.

“If we can show our appreciation it’s the least we can do, the very least we can do,” said Jay Tee Brown at the corner of Brandon Boulevard and Kingsway Road. “I’m retired military and I respect what the soldiers are doing for America.”

So, too, does Barbara Allen of Valrico, who stood at the corner of Brandon Boulevard and Moon Avenue with Bob Lehmann and Karen Rodriguez — two people she had met just moments earlier.

“All the way home tonight I saw people lining the streets with flags, uniformed people, sheriff’s deputies and civilians,” she said.

When she inquired of Rodriguez the reason for the gatherings, she knew she had to stop herself and join them.

Soon after, a deputy with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office stopped by to give the group a handful of American flags to wave and distribute.

“It’s just a small, minute way of showing respect and support,” Rodriguez said. “We live in a free country. Show your support.”

Traveling east down Brandon Boulevard stood Teresa Snyder, wearing a T-shirt created by her husband soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It reads like a breaking news report, which at the time it was, behooving Americans to “rise up and fight back” after a listing of some of the day’s most dramatic moments.

“I made 100 of them during September 11,” said Snyder’s husband, Andrew Balser, who said he also is retired military. “It’s just a passion that came to me when the [World Trade Center] towers came down.”

Paying tribute to Freeman, 25, and his death while conducting combat operations in the Helmand province, Afghanistan, is part of Balser’s purpose as retired military: never to forget.

Those memories came flooding back earlier this week, with the killing of Osama bin Laden, the reason many would argue that Freeman in the first place was on duty thousands of miles from his Plant City roots.

“I was very happy that now justice has been served,” Balser said about bin Laden’s death at the hands of the Navy SEALs. “Everything I felt that day [Sept. 11] came back to me and I thought, ‘Finally, we’ve accomplished our goal."

But it wasn’t just one war, or even Freeman’s war, that was solely remembered along the route of his final journey home.

Veronika Clayton stood solemnly in tribute, remembering, too, the memory of her husband, Harold Dean, a Vietnam veteran, who died two years earlier from the effects of Agent Orange exposure.

Her husband, she said, had dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons disease, a quadruple bypass and spent three days a week on dialysis. She added that he was classified by the Veterans Administration as “100 percent disabled because of Agent Orange."

“They called it ‘service-connected illness,’ “ she said. “On 11 August we would have been married 38 years. He was a good soldier, a good husband, a good father, a good grandfather, a good brother, a good son and a good companion and I took care of him for six- and a-half years and I’d do it all over again. If I could snap my fingers and get him back, I’d do it."

As for her reasons for standing in respect and support for Freeman, 35, a young man with a young family, Clayton said it was just something she had to do.

“Every time I see this [a fallen hero escort] I get teary eyed,” she said. “It’s sad that this happens to soldiers. You get sent over there to help and you come home in a box."