Robert F. Stryker Memorial

I met the O’Haras and Joe at the cemetery one sunny, cold morning last week. Brass military plaques sparkled nearby on other graves. Later we talked over coffee in a diner nearby.

Bill O’Hara had an interesting memento to show me: Robert Stryker’s Medal of Honor. He carries it in a canvas bag, in a glass case, along with a Medal of Honor flag. The Stryker family turned over his medals to the AmVet post for safekeeping. Bill keeps them in a bank safety deposit box.

Wreathea remembers her hometown hero and the phone call she took from a friend informing her of his death

“I remember him as short,” she told me with a laugh.

She told ST. Sims, author of a book on the battle that took his life, “Robert tended to portray a hard shell to others. He wouldn’t back down when confronted by others (at school). But under that shell was a soft and caring heart.”

Sims described Robert as “kind of a loner. Several Charlie Company (his in the 26th Infantry Regiment) told me that he tended to keep himself somewhat aloof.” More than likely, Sims guessed that may have been to protect himself from the emotional consequences if the another soldier were killed.

Robert was a grenadier, a marksman with a grenade launcher. He enlisted in 1963 and later re-enlisted for three years, even though his older brother, Jack, told Sims he really didn’t like the Army and wanted out. He’d gotten into trouble with superiors and had been demoted. He was a Specialist Fourth Class.

He was the unit’s point man. Fellow soldiers told the writer “Bob Stryker was not a man you could have predicted to earn our nation’s highest award for valor.”

His brother soldiers have done right by Robert in Throopsville. Post 513 was formed in 2002 and adopted his name the next year, taking responsibility for his grave site. Robert was buried under an upright military stone next to his parents and grandmother. His mother, Frances, died in 1950, when her son was 6. His dad, Harold, died in 1987 and went to Washington to receive the Medal of Honor from Vice-President Spiro Agnew in 1969. His sister, Leola, passed away also.

“He could have been in Arlington (National Cemetery),” Bill O’Hara said. “The family wanted him back here.”

Members of the Montezuma post weren’t happy with the burial place. One outside Army officer said he was “dumbfounded” when he found it. The veterans cleaned up the site and put up a fence “so that when people saw it, they knew there was something special about the grave.” In 2004, they raised money for a new head stone, an impressive marker of black granite that rises five feet. The post got a grant, provided through town of Throop councilors, for two flag poles. Local contractors hooked up a feed so the flags are lighted at night. There’s a stone bench.

Route 38 was renamed a “highway of valor.” A new armored vehicle was called “The Stryker” for Robert and a World War II private first class, Stuart Stryker (no kin), who also got the Congressional Medal. In 1980, a senior high-rise in Auburn was christened “Stryker Homes” in his honor.

Joe Mulcahy is an old friend from Marcellus, where I grew up.

Back then, he was a ward of the state and lived with Fred Hyatt and his wife at their tree nursery. He spent time at the House of Providence orphanage, too. At 18, Joe paid a drunk five bucks to sign him into the Army by claiming to be Joe’s father. He got involved with Robert Stryker at the request of the 26th Infantry, Joe’s outfit, also.