DANVILLE — A portion of U.S. 62 will be named in honor of Army Staff Sgt. Shamus Goare if Rep. Margaret Ann Ruhl has her way.
Goare, a 1994 graduate of Danville High School, was a member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers, which answered a call for help from Navy SEALs who were under fire from Taliban terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan.
He was a flight engineer on the MH-47 Chinook helicopter which took a hit from a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade and crashed just five miles from where the SEALs were trapped. Goare did not survive the June 28, 2005, attack.
Ruhl has sponsored House Bill 75 in the Ohio House of Representatives to name a portion of the highway from Millwood to the boundary of Knox and Holmes counties.
According to Ruhl, the idea was first proposed by John Keiser of Danville to Sen. Bill Harris who was president of the Ohio Senate at the time.
“He handed the project off to me to take care of when he left the Senate,” Ruhl explained. “He didn’t have enough time to take care of it before he left.”
Ruhl said there were several other similar bills before the house and HB 75 would be combined with those bills by the House Transportation Committee to be voted on all at once.
Goare’s mother, Judy, is pleased with the effort and thinks it is a fitting tribute to her son and to others who have served and died for their country.
“We are honored, very honored, indeed,” she said. “It’s quite a tribute to his memory. I think our son would have been embarrassed by it. He was very modest and unassuming. When he would get awards in school he didn’t want to go to the ceremonies.”
