Crime & Safety
Tally-Ho Remembers Jeffrey Wiener on Memorial Day
Ex-Captain was killed in Iraq in 2005.
On Memorial Day, the members of Tally-Ho Engine Company 3 of the Lynbrook Fire Department joined with Lynbrook’s veterans organizations and local residents to remember 80 other residents who were killed in action from World War I to the Iraq War.
The most recent death was Navy Corpsman Jeffrey L. Wiener, a former Lynbrook volunteer firefighter and an Ex-Captain of Tally-Ho.
Wiener, like many families in the volunteer fire service, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a volunteer firefighter. In 1987 — at age 14 — he became a junior firefighter and in 1991, at age 18, became a member of Tally-Ho Engine #3 of the
Lynbrook Fire Department. He rose through the ranks and served as its captain from 2000 to 2001.
Wiener is remembered by his fellow firefighters and veterans by a stone marker at the Doughboy Memorial. He was killed on May 7, 2005, in an ambush and bombing in Haditha, Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He left behind a wife, Maria Barbario Weiner, and two young girls, Mikayla Lynn and Theodora Rose.
Wiener joined the U.S. Navy shortly after Sept 11, 2001. With his many years of training as a volunteer firefighter and Ex-Captain of Tally-Ho; his training in rescue and excavation operations; as well as his EMS training and skills as a medic for the
LFD and his medic jobs with the Nassau County Police Department; and later with the Jefferson County Kentucky EMS; Wiener became a Navy Corpsman. His first choice was to be a Marine, but the Marines don’t have medics — they have Navy Corpsman. So Wiener joined the Navy. He then immediately volunteered for assignment to a fighting Marine infantry company.
After basic training with the Navy, Wiener attended the Marine Corp’s Field Medical School at Camp Jejeune, NC, where for three grueling months he trained as a fighting infantryman who also had the job of rendering medical aid to those wounded.
Everyone who knew Wiener knew he wanted to go to war and do his part after New York was attacked on 9/11. But a fellow Navy Corpsman friend of his, Taylor Cleveland, of Conneaut, OH, would tell this writer that Wiener wanted to go to war not because he enjoyed war, but because no one was going to fight his battles and no one was going to keep his two beautiful daughters safe for him.
“He was an American, and as long as there was breath in his lungs, Jeff was going to be the one doing the protecting,” Taylor said.
When Wiener arrived in Iraq in late February 2005, after a six-month tour in Bahrain, he wasn’t sent to the front lines but performed routine guard duty at the secure Al-Asad air base. Wiener wasn’t happy in that safe assignment. He wanted more. He wanted to get into battle.
Later, when Wiener and his friend Taylor, both senior members of the medical staff, were offered an opportunity to go to the front lines, they volunteered. By doing this, they spared some other Corpsmen from having to go to the fighting. After being in Iraq for only a month and a half, Wiener was finally going to get into battle.
He was assigned to a Marine Mobile Assault Platoon (MAP). Taylor, his friend, to another platoon. Taylor said that Wiener loved this assignment. “It was like he found something he was looking for his whole life. His purpose. What he had trained for," Taylor said. "To fight for his country, to save lives, next to the finest Marines the world has ever known. He was happy and he was content.”
On May 5, 2005, Wiener’s MAP team was sent to help another platoon involved in a fire fight along the Euphrates River. His team was to move to the rear of the insurgents' position, surround them, and attack. Taylor’s platoon was to back-up Wiener's team.
As Wiener's team moved in their Humvees to surround the insurgents, they drove down an access road along the river. Before they could get behind the enemy, they were met by a roadblock in front of the Haditha Hospital. A decision was then made to turn around and take another route.
With the danger of insurgents attacking them at any time, the Marines got out of their Humvees and walked on either side of the vehicles looking for the enemy with readied arms. They were prepared for a possible ambush of their vehicles and to take on the enemy. Wiener got out of his vehicle as well. When he did, the driver yelled, “Doc, stay in the truck!”
But Wiener wouldn’t listen. He took a position with the other Marines as heavy gun fire was heard nearby. Wiener didn’t have to get out of the Humvee. The Marines wanted to protect their medic. But Wiener wanted to do his part like his Marine
partners.
Suddenly, as the Marines were moving into the area of the fighting, a suicide car bomber came barreling out of nowhere and drove into a Humvee near Wiener. It exploded, and Wiener was hit by shrapnel.
Taylor, whose unit was about a mile behind Wiener’s, said the explosion was “massive.”
The insurgents then attacked the Marines. According to Taylor, a vicious ambush and four-hour fire fight followed the car bomb. Marines were killed and many more were wounded. Wiener, their Navy Corpsman, their “Doc,” was dead. He died doing what he wanted to do.
A total of 48 Marines and two Navy Corpsman — one of whom was Wiener — from the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines died in 2005.
Taylor told this writer that Wiener’s MAP team had some real heroes during that battle, one of them receiving the Navy Cross. They saved the lives of all but four Marines and Wiener, while killing dozens of insurgents.
Taylor said, “I think that they got a little of that courage, that heroism, that character, and without a doubt that knowledge, from Jeff.
"Jeff doesn’t have a medal for what he gave to the Marine Corps, or to those around him," Taylor continued. "He has a legacy. He has friends so devoted they would have given their lives a thousand times so that he could spend another day with his family. Friends who would still lay down their lives just so his memory could not fade in vain.
“I got a medal for one instant of my service in Iraq, and I have quite a few friends that did as well. But given the choice, I would give up that medal to be a tenth of the man that Jeff Wiener was. And so would every Marine I know," Taylor said.
Wiener was buried on May 16, 2005 at Calverton National Cemetery with full military honors. In 2006, Wiener’s name was added to New York State’s Fallen Firefighter’s Memorial in Albany. On Oct. 23, 2008, the Navy Department named its Naval Operations Support Center in Louisville, KY, where Wiener trained and instructed, the “HM2 Jeffrey L. Wiener Hall.”
This summer, the Lynbrook Post Office will be named in Wiener’s honor.
Grogan is a Vietnam-era veteran and a member of Tally-Ho. He is also a former Lynbrook village trustee and a retired federal agent.
