DANVILLE -Six vintage hot rods led a funeral procession through town streets as a tribute to one of the passions of a soldier killed in helicopter crash in Afghanistan with 15 other servicemen.
About 500 people at the funeral Tuesday drove behind the hot rods to the cemetery, passing under a flag hung between two raised fire truck ladders in honor of Army Staff Sgt. Shamus Goare, 29.
He was on a special operations mission June 28 to rescue soldiers missing in mountains near the Pakistani border when the MH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down.
We are here celebrating in freedom made possible by Staff Sgt. Shamus and his crew
said the Rev. F. Richard Snoke at the funeral. Shamus loved his family loved his country. He loved his community and oh yes
he loved his street rods.
Goare graduated from high school in 1994 in Danville, about 50 miles northeast of Columbus. He was 17 at the time and fooled his mother, Judy, into signing his enlistment form, family said.
He had lived in Georgia, where his unit was based, for about five years, and he recently bought a house in Rincon.
Friends and family say Goare would have been embarrassed by the attention from the town's residents.
He was an unassuming young man
Army chaplain Jim McNeely said. He did not seek fame and fortune.
As a member of the Night Stalkers special operations unit, Goare could not tell his family what he was doing.
After Goare was buried -once taps had been played and the Army honor guard had folded the flag draping his coffin -one more tribute was made. The hot rod drivers revved their engines and squealed their tires, sending a plume of smoke billowing from the blacktop.
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