KIMBALL, Tenn. -- During a weeklong celebration of this country's veterans, the Sequatchie Valley Honor Guard paused on Saturday to salute one of Marion County's greatest military heroes.
In June, a plaque at the entrance to the Cumberland View Cemetery in Kimball was dedicated to Medal of Honor winner Master Sgt. Raymond Cooley, but honor guard, a group of military veterans who pay tribute to deceased service members at funerals from Dunlap, Tenn., to Scottsboro, Ala., wasn't able to be there at the time.
Still, the honor guard wanted to lay a special wreath at Cooley's grave and perform a 21-gun salute, said Susan Collins, Americanism chairman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6362 Ladies Auxiliary in Jasper, Tenn.
"This is just a way of letting them pay tribute to their comrade," she said.
Connie Barnes, Cooley's great-niece, and several other family members attended the ceremony.
"It's just amazing," Barnes said. "I'm told he was the kind of guy who was very humble and didn't want a lot of pomp and circumstance, but he'd be tickled about this, I'm sure. He would be very proud."
Cooley, a member of the U.S. Army, was on the Philippine island of Luzon during World War II when he singlehandedly attacked two Japanese machine gun nests that had American troops pinned down.
He destroyed one machine gun nest with grenades, and then crawled to the second. When he pulled the pin on another grenade, he noticed that his buddies had come up and surrounded his position.
There was nowhere for Cooley to safely throw the grenade, so he placed the stock of his rifle and the right side of his body over it. The blast severed his right hand and seriously injured the right side of his body, but Cooley survived.
"Put yourself in his shoes," County Mayor David Jackson said. "Would you do what he did to protect his men? All veterans are heroes, but when a man does that to protect his men, that's pretty incredible."
Cooley was presented the Medal of Honor by President Harry S. Truman in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 23, 1945.
Cooley died in a car accident near South Pittsburg, Tenn., just two years later.
Many in the county didn't know until this year that Cooley was buried at the cemetery in Kimball because his original obituary stated he was buried at the Chattanooga National Cemetery.
"He didn't want that," Barnes said. "He wanted to be home. This was home."
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.