Community Corner
Local Salute to Wounded Warriors
Iraq veteran takes a trolley ride on Wounded Warrior Day, and the trolley car is struck by lightning.
Staff Sgt. Timothy Kingston, a self-described "adrenaline junkie," has been in some tight spots before, but it still came as a surprise Thursday when the vintage trolley he was riding was struck by lightning during a monsoon-like cloudburst.
Kingston, who retired from the Army on a medical discharge last October from wounds received in combat, visited the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven as part of a weeklong program sponsored by the Connecticut and Westbrook Elks Club to support the Wounded Warriors Project.
Earlier this week the tour took him to the Coast Guard Academy, a private visit to Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, a Bridgeport Bluefish baseball game and a trip to the U.S. Navy submarine base museum.
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"It feels good to come back and have support like this," said Kingston. He served two deployments in Iraq where he said he felt he was "just doing my job."
In the two deployments he was stationed at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Speicher with the 101st Airborne Division and at FOB Hammer with the 3rd Infantry Division.
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On one of those deployments his Humvee was damaged by a roadside bomb during an ambush. He said he did not think his wounds were bad enough at the time to be medevaced out of action, but doctors later determined that the bomb’s blast, combined with parachute jump injuries, had resulted in serious back injuries. He spent almost a year in physical therapy at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recuperating before his retirement was effective last October.
Kingston lives in Milford where his mother, Gail Kingston, is the principal of Saint Gabriel School.
He said he was contacted through the VA Hospital in West Haven to participate in the Elks Club program, and on Thursday he brought along his 5-year-old son, Noah.
The Elks Club program brought him to Branford for a fishing derby on Thursday morning and then a trolley ride from Short Beach to the trolley museum. Halfway to the museum, a cloudburst hit, with multiple cloud-to-ground lightning strikes.
One lightning bolt struck their trolley car. It caused a little smoke, and John Soehnlein, the Veterans Committee chairman for the Westbrook Elks Lodge and a volunteer trolley operator/conductor for the museum, said the car was halted for the duration of the storm as a precaution.
Once at the museum, the ceremony to honor veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Wounded Warrior project continued without a hitch.
Mayor April Capone read a proclamation naming June 23, 2011, as Wounded Warrior Day in East Haven; and Stanley H. Welch from U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s office read a letter from the congresswoman, who was not able to attend.
"The Wounded Warrior Project is one way that we, as a community, can support those servicemen and women who sustained injuries while serving in the Armed Forces," DeLauro wrote.
What’s next for Kingston? He said he would soon start flight school to become a helicopter pilot. As an "adrenaline junkie," he couldn’t settle for a desk job.
"It’s a whole new career for me," he said.
