Four to be added to Stafford High Wall of Honor

BY LINDLEY ESTES

Stafford High’s memorial wall has expanded in the year since it was originally built near the school’s football stadium.

The wall, dedicated in May 2011, already honors three alumni: law enforcement officers Todd Bahr and Ford “Toby” Humphrey and Marine Corps Sgt. Donald J. Lamar II, all of whom were killed in the line of duty.

Bahr, who graduated in 1986, was a member of the Fredericksburg police force for just under two years when he was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. The suspect died in a shootout with police in the Belmont Apartments parking lot off Cowan Boulevard near the city police station.

Humphrey was a 1974 graduate of Stafford High and a county sheriff’s deputy. He was killed while responding to a domestic disturbance in October 1980.

Lamar graduated from Stafford High School in 2004 and was killed in Afghanistan in 2010.

Ben Marsh, an alumnus who graduated with Bahr and proposed the wall to coincide with their class’s 25th anniversary, realized that there were many Stafford High alumni who served in the military or were first responders who still needed to be honored.

“It’s the least our country owes to them—for anyone who, as Lincoln said, has that measure of devotion to their country,” he said.

Marsh reached out to the school and a Boy Scout. Ben Whitney, 15, expanded the wall with two 6-foot additions as his Eagle project.

The expansion took a few weeks and involved digging a foundation, pouring concrete and laying bricks.

His father, Brad Whitney, and the masonry class at Stafford High helped him.

“It’s cool to honor them,” Ben said. “I feel good about it.”

There will be a dedication for the new Stafford Indians Alumni Wall of Honor at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, at Lloyd Busch Stadium at Stafford High.

The four honorees who will be added to the wall are: Donald R. Samuels, David B. Thompson, John G. Sullivan and David A. Cloe.

Samuels and Thompson, both in the Army, were killed in Vietnam. Cloe died in a helicopter crash in South Dakota while in the Air Force.

Sullivan was killed responding to a fire with the Falmouth Fire Department in April 1956.

A plaque recognizing Stafford residents who died in World War I and the Korean War also will be added.

Marsh hopes any surviving family of the four honorees will attend the dedication.

Marsh said the dedication will feature the installation of the plaques on the wall, as well as speeches, including one from Stafford Commonwealth’s Attorney Eric Olsen.

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