Saluted soldier

In the pre-dawn darkness, President Obama solemnly saluted the flag-draped coffin of a soldier arriving at Dover Air Force Base. 

That image, captured on Oct. 29 and seen around the world, allowed the public a rare glimpse at what is usually an extraordinarily private moment. And it happened because the family of Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin wanted the world to see, up close, the personal sacrifice that comes with war.

That’s the way the sergeant’s grandmother explains it as she looks at another photograph, this one in the living room of her New Bern home.

It’s a black and white shot, taken at Virginia Military Institute, and it captures a moment when Reba Griffin got “an absolute bear hug” from her uniformed grandson Dale. Though Sgt. Griffin was born and raised in Indiana, his family’s roots begin in Eastern North Carolina, where both his father Gene and his mother Dona graduated from New Bern High School, and where many of his relatives still live.

“I think, as people, we know that war is hard, and that not everybody comes back,” Reba Griffin said. “But until it grips you, really grips you, you can’t understand it.”

The harshest reality of war would grip the Griffin family on Oct. 27.

That is the day Dale Griffin died from wounds suffered when the vehicle he was traveling in with other soldiers was struck by a roadside bomb. He was in southern Afghanistan, and he was 29.

Reba Griffin can recall, word for word, the phone call that she got from her son Gene soon thereafter.

“He was devastated, I knew that much before I ever knew what he was going to say,” Reba Griffin said. “I said, ‘Are you all right?’ And he said, ‘I’m fine.’ And I knew right then.

“Oh, no. It’s Dale.”

The boy who was so much like his father, who had grown to become a football team captain and a champion wrestler, died doing exactly what he wanted to do.

“He decided several years ago that he wanted to defend freedom,” his grandmother said. “He would have been restless if he hadn’t.”

Sgt. Dale Griffin will be laid to rest in Terre Haute, Ind. — on Veterans Day.

Nikie Mayo can be reached at 252-635-5665 or nmayo@freedomenc.com.