JS Tip 581: Remembering on Memorial Day

Monday is Memorial Day, the day we remember those who gave their lives while serving in the military. 

Let's remember one young sailor. 

Edward Benfold was known by his friends as “Teddy.” He belonged to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. He attended Audubon High School. He sang with the school choir and acted in the junior- and senior-class plays.

After graduation, he enlisted as a Navy Corpsman (a medic). He married his sweetheart Dorothy, and they had a son together, Edward Joseph. 

In July of 1952, he deployed to Korea with the First Marine Division. 

Three weeks later, he was killed in action while treating two wounded Marines. 

Under intense enemy fire, he had crawled to a shell crater to treat their wounds. North Korean soldiers tossed two grenades into the crater. Benfold, realizing the danger to his friends, picked up the grenades, leaped from the crater, and charged the oncoming North Koreans. He sacrificed his life to save his friends.

His death in combat was the second in the family. Ten years earlier, his father had been killed on a troop ship torpedoed by a German U-boat. 

Most of us have never heard of Edward Benfold before. Or his father. 

Now we can remember them. 

They and the others who gave their lives for this country are real. 

Their sacrifice is real. 

Their loss is real. 

We need to remember that. 

Next week, we’ll go back to our regular tips. 

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Edward Benfold is the namesake of the USS Benfold, the AEGIS-class U.S. Navy destroyer at the center of It’s Your Ship, the leadership book by Captain Michael Abrashoff.