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He joked with two buddies about how they were the oldest guys in the unit. Olson talked about how the day now had much more meaning for him because he was about to go to war. When the battalion finished its training, I went to Camp Shelby, Miss., to write about the unit and sought out Olson on a field filled with 4,000 soldiers assembled for a going-away ceremony. He became emotional as he talked about how much he would miss his wife and four children, and the farmers who were his customers at the local bank where he was a loan manager. The 35-year-old staff sergeant sat at a table doing paperwork. I stopped at Neillsville's armory to talk to soldiers getting ready for deployment and met Todd Olson. I picked Neillsville, a community of 2,700 in central Wisconsin, which turned out to say goodbye to Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry on Father's Day 2004. When the first Wisconsin National Guard combat arms unit was deployed overseas since World War II, I wrote about the impact on a small town when its guard unit is mobilized. It might be a father of four from Neillsville: Two years earlier, Nichole Frye had been sitting in the flute section. Her high school band played at the service one empty chair was draped with a band uniform, with a flute lying on top. Bus drivers left their vehicles to come inside and pay their respects, gray-haired men in matching bus company jackets, some wiping away tears. School buses lined up to ferry mourners one mile down the road to the cemetery that would become her final resting place. Frye had been killed while driving a vehicle hit by an improvised explosive device in Baqouba, Iraq.īefore the burial, hundreds packed the high school gym for her funeral service. They listened to taps sounded by two Lena High School trumpeters and watched a soldier present the 19-year-old woman's parents with her Purple Heart and Bronze Star. On the cold February day she was buried in 2004, plywood was laid across the muddy, snowy ground for her family, friends and neighbors to stand on. The soft music of wind chimes drifts through the tiny cemetery, next to a cornfield not yet plowed. The grass has grown green around Nichole Frye's black granite grave marker. It might be a soldier from Lena, still in her teens: Meg’s late father John was a Navy World War II vet, and on each of the major military holidays she would remember soldiers, pilots, sailors, Marines, Guardsmen and Reservists whom she had met and whom we had lost. Thursday is Veterans Day, one of those days we miss Meg most. And her empathy and concern for the loved ones of those who made that sacrifice. She was a caring friend and colleague, who looked after those who were ailing, took interns and young reporters under her wing, and conspired with experienced journalists as they assigned themselves to the best stories they could find.Įven greater than Meg’s knowledge and regard for all things Wisconsin was her respect and gratitude for the troops willing to sacrifice everything for us. Traveled the world, with her mom, Carole, and her Uncle Jack, riding the rails, surfing, diving, kayaking, in Africa, Russia, South America, Australia, the Middle East. Born a Rhinelander Hodag, she grew up in Whitewater and reported in Marinette, Shawano and Wausau before joining the Milwaukee Sentinel as a state reporter in 1993. Served as a volunteer at multiple Olympic Games. “Everything you think about Wisconsin was Meg." "She was a George Webb's waitress, was on the crew team in Madison and was in the UW marching band,” said longtime Journal Sentinel colleague Meg Kissinger. Night game at Camp Randall Stadium.Ī Drew Brees-led Purdue team is driving toward the end zone when the quarter ends and the teams switch direction.Īs the Boilermakers prepare to move the football toward the north end zone and the University of Wisconsin-Madison student section, the wailing of trumpets playing three F sharps followed by a B note blares from the loudspeakers.Īnd suddenly the student section looks like red and white kernels of popcorn popping during an earthquake. Who could write them the way Meg described that very moment when “Jump Around” became a Badgers thing? Who could best cover the warmest autumn in state history? The latest chapter of the University of Wisconsin Marching Band? The stories of Wisconsin troops leaving Afghanistan and of Afghan refugees arriving at Fort McCoy? We miss Meg Jones, our all-Wisconsin reporter, every day.
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