Battlefield Cross Memorial to be dedicated Sunday at Wasilla High

WASILLA — It started as an ordinary day. He emailed his father a joke at 7:59 a.m. He spoke with his wife on the phone a few minutes after 9 a.m.

Then at 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, killing all 64 people on the plane, including the hijackers, and 125 people inside the Pentagon.

ET1 Ronald J. Hemenway worked for the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon when he was killed Sept. 11, 2001.

His remains and those of four others were never found. He was 37.

His parents, Robert and Shirley Hemenway, traveled to Alaska from their home in Shawnee, Kan., to be part of a dedication ceremony at Wasilla High School at 3 p.m., Sunday when a 46-inch-tall bronze Battlefield Cross Memorial will be dedicated in his memory.

Hemenway graduated from Wasilla High in 1982 and went on to attend the University of Alaska Fairbanks before enlisting in the Navy at age 30.

“This isn’t for us,” Robert Hemenway said Thursday. “We’d like them to remember our son, Ron. But also what it means to lose 3,000 lives in vain.”

Shirley Hemenway said it is very important to the family that the Battlefield Cross Memorial dedicated to their son’s memory have a permanent home in Alaska.

“It’s so important to have this memorial in Alaska,” she said. “The kids who will graduate this year were 8 when this happened.”

Alaska was remote to the tragedies and grief that devastated thousands of families like the Hemenways in the Lower 48. The family said they hope the memorial will make that dark day in U.S. history more real for students at the school and residents of Alaska in general.

“We had 47 requests for interviews that next day,” she said. “There were TV cameras on our front lawn.”

Providence steps in

The Battlefield Cross Memorial is part of a larger effort to place the memorials in each community in Kansas and Missouri that has lost a soldier in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the Hemenway family felt strongly that their Battlefield Cross Memorial belonged in Alaska, as a reminder.

That’s when providence stepped in.

Maj. Mark Melson was in the audience Sept. 11, 2010, at a Gold Star function at a VFW in Leavenworth, Kan., where the Hemenway’s Battlefield Cross Memorial was dedicated.

After the ceremony, Melson said he made a point to meet the family and tell them about his Alaska ties and to share memories of his son, Jacob Melson, who died in a National Guard helicopter crash in Iraq.

Melson said he offered to help the family get the memorial to Alaska and installed in a permanent home here. VFW Post 10252 in Mountain View got help from Conrad Villagas and FedEx to pay shipping costs, Melson said.

Back in Alaska, Melson contacted the Mat-Su Borough School District and connected with employees Ron Rucker and Mark Okeson, who helped to coordinate the effort.

Okeson, now the principal at Career Technical High School, said he knew Hemenway when they were boys growing up in the Mat-Su Valley together.

“We were about a year apart in age,” Okeson said. “We were part of the same youth group trip one summer.”

He said the Battlefield Cross Memorial will be placed near the flagpole at Wasilla High.

Born in Cordova

Hemenway was born July 25, 1964, in Cordova and lived in Alaska until the family moved to Kansas when he was 22.

After enlisting in the Navy, he attended electronics school and graduated after 11 months as a Distinguished Military Graduate. Hemenway chose an assignment with the U.S.S. LaSalle and was stationed at Gaeta, Italy.

While stationed in Italy, he met and married Marinella in 1997 when he was 33. The couple had two children — Stefan and Desiree — who will turn 11 and 13 in November.

It was his Stefan who led him to apply for a job opening at the Pentagon in 2000 so he could be closer to his family in Kansas and to be home every night with his son. He got the assignment and the family moved to Bolling Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., in March 2000.

He rests in a single casket placed in a five-sided Rock of Ages monument at Arlington National Cemetery Sept. 12, 2002, along with the unidentified remains of four other people who died at the Pentagon that tragic day.

For Hemenway’s parents, this would be their second time burying a son. Son Dale died as an infant.

Shirley Hemenway said after Ron’s death she was angry and questioned why her, why did God take her sons?

In Washington, D.C., on Memorial Day weekend 2002, the couple attended a TAPS — Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors — meeting where they met a woman whose husband and three children had all died in a small plane crash. Shirley Hemenway said meeting that woman and hearing her story helped her realize God hadn’t singled her out for hardship.

“TAPS got us through those first years,” she said.

‘I’m sorry for your loss’

Ten years later, it’s easier to talk about that day and what they lost Sept. 11, 2001. These events forever changed the whole Hemenway family, including his own family and the families of his siblings — Robert Jr., Sheri, Debbie, Kathy and Paul.

“Learn from the philosophy in the Quran that lead to this event,” Robert Hemenway said. “If we don’t, it will be repeated.”

The two also volunteer to work with various veterans and survivors groups in an effort to help transform tragedy into hope for themselves and others.

Shirley Hemenway is president of the North East Chapter of Gold Star Mothers. The group is made up of mothers whose sons or daughters served and died in service to the United States.

“Before 9/11 I didn’t even know what a Gold Star Mother was,” Shirley Hemenway said.

Her vehicle has Gold Star Mothers license plate No. 6. Some people still ask how she got a license plate like that.

“You don’t want to know,” Robert Hemenway tells the curious.

When they tell their story, people don’t know what to say, the Hemenways said.

“Just say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’” Robert Hemenway said.

“Or you don’t have to say anything. Just hug,” Shirley Hemenway said.

Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.