‘Hallowed’ ground on JBLM now features a permanent marker

Ellie Sigfrid, 11, was born six months after her father, Lucas Sigfrid, died during a nighttime training mission at Joint Base Lewis McChord on December 12, 2011.

She and her mother, Hilary Sigfrid, traveled from their home in Minnesota to participate today with the families of the three other soldiers lost that night to dedicate a permanent memorial to their lives that is now installed in a quiet corner of the base not far from where the tragedy happened.

Some 100 soldiers, neighbors and veterans participated in the dedication ceremony.

Careful observers of the site off of Rainier Road will recall a simple makeshift memorial of four wooden crosses and four small U.S. flags that marked the site. The air cavalry troopers, all OH-58 helicopter reconnaissance pilots, included:

• Chief Warrant Officer Three Shan Joseph Satterfield, from Alaska, whose service began in September 1997 and who previously deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was 32.
• Chief Warrant Officer Two Lucas Sigfrid, whose active-duty service began in May 2008. He was 32.
• Chief Warrant Officer Three Frank Buoniconti III, who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and deployed twice each to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was 36.
• Captain Anne Montgomery, whose active-duty service started in August 2008 after she was graduated from the U.S. Military Academy (West Point). She was 25.

Had it not been for the caring eye of some Rainier residents, who noticed the flags, the grass might have grown tall around them and their names, for most people, would have faded into history.

One local resident, Michael Foote, noticed the flags and borrowed a commercial lawn mower every few weeks for four years to keep the land clear around the makeshift memorial. He told The JOLT he did it, in part, to honor his grandfather, Robert N. Turnmire, 80, a disabled Viet Nam war veteran who attended today’s ceremony.

Eventually, this informal volunteer effort caught the attention of Foote’s aunt, Theresa Champion, who works at Mills & Mills Funeral Home, which offered to construct a permanent marker dedicating the loss of the four soldiers.

Army Chaplain Captain Daren Armstrong spoke at the dedication. “In 1865, our Commander in Chief noted while memorializing Gettysburg that the ground where Soldiers died is consecrated and hallowed — nothing others could do would add or take away from this fact,” Armstrong said.

“Today we are mindful of President Lincoln’s words as we look at this memorial, this Monument to four lost family members, friends, comrades-in-arms, Troopers. The blood shed here, the last breaths, the last thoughts make this place sacred and holy beyond anything we can do or say.”