Fallen hero receives Medal of Honor from Ovideo FL

Last Memorial Day I heard the story of Staff Sgt. Miller and saw his parents sitting in the front row of the honored guest. Pride and a grief blended together with dignity. I will never forget how they were that day. Many other places want to claim Staff Sgt. Miller as their own but Oviedo was his home after high school and his parents still live there. I just wish that as states want to claim the right to say one of their own "won" the Medal of Honor as if it is some kind of sport, they would also fight over the right to take care of all the wounded and the homeless with as much passion and turn having the highest success rate as their goal so they can honor all the heroes who served from their state. That would really be honoring them!

Fallen hero receives Medal of Honor
By Mark K. Matthews, Orlando Sentinel Washington Bureau
4:55 p.m. EDT, October 6, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Calling his sacrifice the "true meaning of heroism," President Barack Obama on Wednesday presented the Medal of Honor to the Oviedo family of Army Staff Sgt. Robert J. Miller, who died in January 2008 protecting a patrol of American and Afghan soldiers.

"It has been said that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point," said Obama, addressing a solemn crowd in the East Room of the White House. "For Rob Miller, the testing point came nearly three years ago, deep in a snowy Afghan valley. The courage he displayed that day reflects every virtue that defined his life."

Their son is buried in Central Florida; his family moved to Oviedo soon after Robert Miller graduated from high school in Illinois, where he grew up.

Miller, who died at 24 on his second tour in Afghanistan, is only the third service member from that conflict to receive the Medal of Honor. The Green Beret earned the distinction when his team of eight U.S. Special Forces and about 15 Afghan troops, with Miller on point, was caught in a ferocious ambush by insurgents in northwest Afghanistan.

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Fallen hero receives Medal of Honor