National charity honors vet

Dale Smith's wife and three children helped to honor their husband and father Monday in a ceremony organized by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which arranged and paid for the new therapy room and bathroom modifications that Dale needs in the family home.

Smith has been disabled since he received head wounds from a sniper's bullet in July 2011 while he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, serving in Afghanistan. That was after he had been deployed three times, once to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan. He has won a Bronze Star, a Bronze Star with Valor and a Purple Heart.

The sniper wound, however, has left Smith blind with severe traumatic brain injury, a stroke and partial deafness.

His specially adapted home near ranch and dairy land outside of Texico was adapted to Smith's special needs through the efforts of Tunnel to Towers Foundation, whose main mission is to construct and renovate homes for veterans and first-responders disabled by injuries in the line of duty.

The foundation gets its name from the actions of Stephen Siller, a New York firefighter who was killed in the aftermath of the Sept.11, 2001, attack on New York's World Trade Center.

Andrew McClure, development manager for the foundation, told Siller's story at Monday's ceremony, Siller was on his way to play golf with his brothers on 9-11 when he learned that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. Siller called his wife to ask her to relay to the brothers that Siller was on his way to work.

When he arrived at his fire station, he learned that the unit was already on its way to the disaster site.

Siller decided he would get there, anyway. He loaded his truck with gear and got as far as the entrance to the two-mile-long Brooklyn tunnel. Security personnel would not let his truck into the tunnel. Siller then donned 60 pounds of firefighting gear and walked the tunnel to get to the World Trade Center, where his life ended. He was among 340 firefighters who would lose their lives on 9-11 as both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed, McClure said.

The Tunnel to Towers Foundation was the response of Siller's family to Stephen Siller's sacrifice.

On Monday, however, it was Dale Smith's sacrifice that received the attention. As Smith's wife and three children looked on, Smith received a plaque and a small section of steel from the collapsed World Trade Center molded into the shape of two towers.

McClure said Siller's body was never recovered from the rubble, so any piece of the wreckage "contains his DNA."

Smith stood and said, "My grandfather spent 20 years in the Air Force. My father spent 20 years in the Air Force, and I gave the U.S. Army 14 years before they gave me the boot."

Also attending Monday's ceremonies were Texico volunteer firefighters, including Chief Doug Scioli, who said firefighters had responded to a few emergency medical calls involving Dale Smith.

Following the presentation of plaques, the ceremony moved to a flagpole in Smith's front yard. There, a new American flag was attached and unfurled into the southerly wind and hoisted to the top of the flagpole by a crank turned by Smith's sons Sage, 11, and Dallin, 9, while Smith's wife Lindsey and daughter Cadence, 15, looked on.

Following the ceremony, McClure and R. Craig Rhoades, a Tunnel to Towers project manager, prepared to leave, McClure to catch a plane to New York City and Rhoades to Copper Canyon, Texas.

Rhoades on Monday was ending two weeks in Clovis to inspect the work done on Smith's house by Arise Construction Co. of Clovis, to Copper Canyon for another building assignment to help another veteran.