Medal of Honor Recipients After 9/11

SPC McGinnis (heroism in Iraq)

Instead of going on hokey shopping sprees for Memorial Day, let's take a minute to give props to our Medal of Honor Recipients since 9/11 (all awarded post-humously). An important story of yesterday's troublemaker being today's hero is SPC Ross McGinnis. From Scripps:

At age 14, in eighth grade, Ross bought marijuana from a classmate and foolishly discussed the transaction at Keystone Junior-Senior High School. Staff members searched his locker, where they found a couple of knives, his father said.

Ross had no malicious intent, but this was less than two years after the mass murders at Columbine High in Colorado. School districts across the country no longer had patience for students holding weapons.

The school board expelled Ross and the district attorney prosecuted him in juvenile court. He spent a year on probation. During that time, he had to get permission from his probation officer to go out in the evening...

… Tom and Romayne McGinnis, parents of the fallen soldier, say it is difficult to think of their skinny, rambunctious son as a national hero.

"He'd remind you more of Bart Simpson than anything else -- you know, sort of an underachiever," said Tom McGinnis, 58. "But when it really meant something, he produced."

Other Medal of Honor Recipients are shown below:

Top-Left is LT Murphy (heroism in Afghanistan), and top to bottom, left to right is CPL Dunham, MA2 Monsoor, and SFC Smith (heroism in Iraq )