Rest In Peace, Army Staff Sargeant Chauncey Mays

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

I've never met Army Staff Sargeant Chauncey Mays, but I'm here to tell ya, the boy has a lot, A LOT, of friends.  Let me explain.

Chuck and I were on I-30 today headed west towards Greenville.  We were about 30 miles from home when we started noticing people standing on the overpasses with flags.  Every overpass we went under, there were more and more people standing on the bridges looking down on I-30 like they were waiting on something.

We continued to proceed west a few more miles when we came upon approximately 20-25 highway patrol police cars, city police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, etc. all with their lights on, but sitting idle on the side of the highway going the opposite direction from us, again like they were waiting on something.

At this point, I called my girlfriend Becky and asked her if she knew what was going on.  That's when I heard the name Chauncey Mays for the first time.  See, Army Staff Sargeant Mays lived in the small town of Pickton near where we live.  While in Afghanistan defusing a bomb several weeks ago, he was killed when the bomb went off.  They were bringing his body home today.  He was 25 years old.

25 years old

Shortly after hanging up with Becky, we continued seeing people standing on the opposite side of the highway waving flags in front of farms, at gas stations or just in the grassy median.  We had now been seeing people with flags for about 25 miles when we topped the hill and saw an endless line of motorcycles......it went on forever......and then an endless line of fire trucks and police cars.....I also noticed that no one was pulling over on our side of the freeway, but having been raised to ALWAYS pull over out of respect, I quickly pulled to the side of the highway as the semi's shook my car as they sped by......

Chuck and I were in awe over the amount of people that were honoring this young man....It was an amazing site and brought tears to both of our eyes as we sat, for what seemed like an hour, waiting on the procession to pass on the opposite side of the highway.  It made me think of my own nephew who will be graduating in just over a week from the Marine Officer Training School in Quantico, VA and how touched and honored he would be to see what we were seeing.  And I couldn't help but think that unimaginable thought; what if this had been him?

As the last car in the procession passed, I looked in my rearview mirror preparing to merge back on the highway and saw as far back as I could see, people had pulled over and paid their respects as well.  I felt honored to have been a tiny part of this man's friends and family paying respect to him today.

Honored

Thank you Chauncy Mays, who left behind a wife and two toddlers.