Combat-wounded veteran Jeremiah Pauley is speaker
By Loreen Berlin
The City of Buena Park recently held its 41st annual Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast at the Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel, where the goal for those in attendance is to come away feeling blessed and uplifted within their own individual lives.
Mayor Art Brown welcomed those in attendance.
“You’ll be invited to join silently as prayers are offered on behalf of our community and nation by local pastors,” said Brown. “You are Buena Park residents, business owners, church leaders, students, school board members or school officials. Some of you are City of Buena Park staff members, elected members of other City Councils and boards of directors. On behalf of the planning committee, on which I had the honor of serving, thank you to all of you for attending today.”
Mayor Brown and Master of Ceremonies Pastor Don Harbert recognized and presented Gold Sponsors Certificates of Appreciation.
Each year, the motivational speaker is someone who has somehow overcome great challenges in their life, which helps those in attendance to realize that they too can achieve, no matter what their struggles or situations may be.
Ret. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Pauley was the speaker this year, representing the Wounded Warrior Project.
Sgt. Pauley medically retired after a roadside IED exploded in Iraq, leaving his right arm dangling and unusable. He shared the stages he experienced after the accident, from working through anger to finally being able to start moving forward.
“The greatest lesson in my life came to me from my father who said, ‘If you can help anyone, you should do it,’” Sgt. Pauley explained, comparing it to scouting, where scouts do a good turn daily and where on Saturdays, he and his young fellow scout troop members would help older people carry their groceries to their cars and those same scouts building a park bench in their town in Ohio where he grew up.
Sgt. Pauly said when he told his father he was going to join the Army, his father simply asked, “Did you tell your mother?”
Sgt. Pauley said he attended the University of Akron studying business, but just didn’t feel that was the right fit for him. So he called an Army friend of his who explained going to Infantry Camp was an opportunity to carry a gun; another friend suggested going into the Airborne Army because it paid more to jump out of an airplane. He decided on the Airborne Infantry; he had the aptitude and set his sight on that goal.
“The hardest thing was to tell my mom that I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, and that was the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, where I would train to become the very best of myself,” he said. “I loved serving my country and loved putting on my uniform every day while leading soldiers into combat.”
Sgt. Pauley was assigned to Iraq, where there was no running water and hot meals were hard to come by.
“In Iraq, I sent one of my teams into a house to clear it, thinking, ‘How luck am I that I get to serve my country and wear this uniform?’ and I could hardly wait to get back home to tell my dad about my service,” he said, explaining that when the soldiers came out of the cleared house, he touched the soldier on the shoulder as acknowledgement.
At that very moment, a roadside bomb exploded. Sgt. Pauley said the dust was so thick that, “You could cut it with a knife.” As he struggled to get his hand on his weapon, he found his hand was just hanging there, with blood all over it.
It took 30 minutes before he was placed on a stretcher after having been in the Army less than a year.
Looking back, he says, “I thought it was my fault; every day I wear a bracelet with the name of the soldier who died that day, as a way of honoring him.”
Returning back home, Sgt. Pauley said he learned how to adapt to his physical problems; however, dealing with Post Traumatic Stress (PTS) symptoms nagged at him and having his parents both pass away, he said he turned into a very angry person.
“I served my country and was wounded there; people would say, ‘You don’t look wounded.’ I would look at my bracelet with Soldier Jody’s name on it and think that because he died, he got the better deal; I wanted to party one more time and then take my own life,” Sgt. Pauley continued.
Sgt. Pauley said the statue with a solder carrying another wounded soldier helped him to heal. “You don’t have to be a staff member to be the warrior on the bottom; you are the warrior on the bottom carrying the Wounded Warrior on your shoulder.”
Sgt. Pauley said that over time, he began to realize that he was given the blessing of being able to leave the battlefield to go home and even though he had and is still working with PTS symptoms, he was able to live his life at home and was able to have the blessing of becoming a father.
“I don’t need to wear a uniform to serve my country—I can honor my father, brothers and sisters who didn’t make it home—and if you ever have a chance to serve others, do that, as we have all been wounded by life,” he concluded.
The invocation was offered by the Reverend Matthew Agosto with The City Church. The benediction was by St. Pius V Catholic Church Fr. Juvy Crisostomo. Presentation of Colors was by the Buena Park Police Officers Color Guard and the Pledge of Allegiance was led by title sponsor Steve Knott and the Knott family. The National Anthem was sung by “The Singing Policeman” Daniel Rodriguez.
Local pastors and clergy prayed for Buena Park communities, schools, teachers and youth, the military, justice and safety, and federal, state and local governments.
Those presenting prayers included the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Calvary Chapel of La Palma, Elevate Ministries, the Lutheran Church of The Good Shepherd and The Bridge.
The annual Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast is organized by the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast Committee and generously sponsored by the Knott family for 41 years. “It seems like the right thing to do and we enjoy sponsoring the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast,” said Stephen Knott, grandson of Knott’s Berry Farm founder Walter Knott.
Additional sponsors included EDCO Waste and Recycling, McAuley LCX Corporation, Steve Lee with Il Palco Italian Restaurant, West Coast Sand and Gravel, the Law Offices of Yohan Lee and SoCal Gas.
Special music was presented by Daniel Rodriguez who became known in New York City as “The Singing Policeman” in his former line of work as a police officer because of his role as one of NYPD’s designated National Anthem singers. In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, he received widespread attention with his rendition of “God Bless America,” which he sang at memorial events and he has recorded numerous albums and appeared as lead tenor in several operas and regularly appears in support of charities, as well as performing a full domestic and international concert schedule.
