St. Mary School receives flag flown aboard military aircraft transporting wounded soldiers on fifth anniversary of attacks
Gilroy – Melissa Morales’ sudden decision to trade nursing school for a career in the military definitely hit her family by surprise. At the time, she was living the good life in Santa Cruz, but that changed overnight.
“She came home one day and said, ‘Dad, I just joined the Air Force,” said Jim Morales with an easy smile that displayed his obvious fatherly pride.
That was nearly five years ago, a short time before planes successively crashed into the World Trade Center twin towers, the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field. And after the terrorist attacks, Staff Sgt. Morales’ job description changed.
The now 26-year-old headed to Iraq, where she was stationed for five months. While in the war zone Melissa Morales, a medical technician, cared for wounded soldiers at the base hospital.
Her sister, then a fifth-grader at St. Mary School, and classmates sent letters and packages to the elder Morales and other soldiers serving overseas.
As a thank you, Melissa Morales and her crew carried an American flag aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 hospital aircraft which transports wounded soldiers from the Middle East to a military hospital in Germany. And on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the nation-shattering attacks, the Morales family presented St. Mary’s with the shadowbox containing the special flag.
Melia Morales, 12, read a short passage detailing the history of the flag while another student displayed the plaque for the crowd of children dotting the playground. Melissa Morales, now stationed in Germany, spends her time tending to injured soldiers, both American and British, on a hospital plane that travels from Iraq to American and German military hospitals.
The family flew to Germany recently to pick up the flag that will now hang on the wall of the Gilroy Catholic school.
St. Mary Principal Christa Hanson wrapped up the morning ceremony saying, “as we pray this morning let’s remember 9/11 and remember all those people who lost their lives.”
In Gilroy, it’s Marine Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes who made the utmost sacrifice in this war. The 22-year-old, who died in 2004 while fighting in Fallujah, was the first Gilroyan to die in battle since Vietnam.
During the ceremony Hanson referenced Army Pfc. Danny Perry, a local soldier and St. Mary alumni, who suffered serious injuries while serving in Iraq in February. Students, with their knapsacks still clinging to their backs, listened as their principal read a poem she had written in memory of Sept. 11.
Hanson explained that before the terrorists decided to hijack the planes, 9/11 was just a regular day, that businessmen and women were just heading to their offices that morning.
“Jets become missiles and we cry out ‘why,'” Hanson said.
“And the fourth plane misses the mark, thank God for heroes but they are fallen heroes and we cry out ‘why.'”
Once Hanson spoke the final word of her poem, everyone turned toward the red, white and blue flying at half-staff.
And under the warmth of the September morning sunshine, small hands and big hands were placed across the heart and the words “I pledge allegiance, to the flag of the United States of America,” echoed across the school grounds.