Photo: AFP
On August 28th, 2013, a suicide car bomber breeched a wall and blew himself up during a firefight at a U.S. army base in Ghanzi Province in Afghanistan. U.S. Staff Sergeant Michael Ollis, a native of New Dorp in Staten Island, died in the ensuing attack, but not before stepping in front of a Polish army officer, saving him and other troops nearby from being severely injured or killed. SSG Ollis received several posthumous accolades, including the Distinguished Service Cross, Polish Army Gold Medal and Purple Heart, but on February 3rd, President Trump contacted his parents to say that, in honor of his heroic sacrifice, their son Michael would receive the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor.
It was a phone call that Ollis’s family took with great pride and joy, most notably his sister, Kimberly Ollis-Loschiavo, who is an ardent Trump supporter; she cheered loudly and thanked the President for acknowledging her brother’s sacrifice. She appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to describe the phone call that “validated” her brother’s supreme sacrifice.
Loschiavo explained to host Larry Mendte how proud she was to be in the room when that phone call came: “I was just so happy, finally, that this country was recognizing the acts that my brother had [done for] us, for our freedoms in the country. Thirteen long years of, finally, the federal government finally, actually saying, ‘Thank you so much for helping us stay safe and helping us have the freedoms and the choices that we have’, and for me, that was the most profound and exciting moment of my life for my brother. It’s the least we could have done for him.”
Loschiavo recounted Michael as a young man wearing camouflage and helping others, carrying the baton of service that he inherited from him father, who is a Vietnam veteran: “He bled [Army] green. That was his life, that was his passion, and I think that was his purpose in life. He was such a gift, and he would constantly help people as he became a young man. At any aspect of the world- people parked on the streets, people in accidents on Staten Island- he would just pull up and help any time he could.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images