VMI alumnus killed in Afghanistan honored by Obama

By: BY KARIN KAPSIDELIS Media General News Service | The News & Advance
Published: October 30, 2009

The flag-draped casket that President Barack Obama saluted early yesterday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware contained the remains of a former student at Virginia Military Institute.

The body of Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin, 29, killed Tuesday by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, was among the remains of 18 Americans whose return home the president witnessed in a solemn pre-dawn tribute.

Griffin, of Terre Haute, Ind., attended VMI for three semesters, beginning in fall 1999. He was remembered yesterday on the Lexington campus for the unusual honor of being named the most outstanding wrestler in a championship tournament when he was just a freshman.

Obama took part in a process the military calls a "dignified transfer" of the remains of 15 soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

The transfer of Griffin's remains at Dover was the only one held in full view of the news media.

Griffin was among eight soldiers killed when their personnel vehicles struck roadside bombs in Kandahar province. The other Americans honored at Dover were 10 people, including the three DEA agents, killed in a helicopter crash returning from the scene of a firefight with suspected Taliban drug traffickers.

With Griffin's death, VMI has had 12 alumni and one former faculty member killed in hostile actions since Sept. 11, 2001.

Even with the U.S. at war in two countries, however, VMI has seen a steady growth in its enrollment.

"I know it's sort of counterintuitive," said spokesman Lt. Col. Stewart MacInnis. But VMI is "seeing record enrollment and more inquiries and more applications than ever."

This fall, VMI enrolled 1,500 cadets, up from 1,428 last year and 1,378 the previous year.

Also increasing is the number of cadets who enter the military after they graduate. Historically, about 18 percent of VMI cadets make a career of the military, although more will serve one or two tours of duty, MacInnis said.

In the 1990s, after VMI ended a mandatory commissioning policy, only about 30 percent served in the military.

But 52 percent of cadets in the Class of 2009 were commissioned, MacInnis said.

There's "something about this particular generation," he said, that it includes so many people "who care and want to serve."

Karin Kapsidelis is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.