A color guard from the Forney ISD AFJROTC opened the special ceremony.

Honoring a fallen hero

by CARY GRIFFIN.
 
In September 2004, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, U. S. Army Specialist Chad Hayden Drake of Forney undertook a mission he was under no obligation to accept. A month before, the humvee he was riding in had been hit by a roadside bomb while on a mission to rescue two pilots—but Drake got the driver and the hatch gunner out of the vehicle and accomplished his mission in spite of injuries he suffered in an ensuing firefight. He was serving with the 1st Battalion, 82nd Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division.
 

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