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Photos: 400 points of light for Staten Island's fallen Sgt. Ollis

silive.com/southshore/index.ssf /2013/09/400_points_of _light_f or_staten.html

Kiawana Rich/Staten Island Advance

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- They turned out Wednesday night to Great Kills to remember a great soldier, a great son, a
great brother, a great friend.

The Great Kills Veterans Memorial was where friends, family and loved ones gathered, more than 400-strong, at a
candlelight vigil to remember U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis, a Bronze Star recipient who was killed last week by
insurgents in Afghanistan.

“Mikey,” a muscular and striking 24-year-old New Dorp resident, was weaned on stories of his father’s military service in
Vietnam and delighted in playing “Army” on tree-lined Burbank Avenue.

He followed in the footsteps of his father, Robert — a fellow Bronze Star recipient — by entering the Army on his
graduation from Petrides High School in 2006.

Ollis’ selflessness in duty was typified by his ultimate sacrifice, on Aug. 28, when, according to his superiors, he lay
down his life to save other members of his unit when the insurgents attacked with an improvised explosive device and
small-arms fire.
“His main mission was getting the job done by bringing them [his platoon] home at the end of the day,” U.S. Marine Cpl.
Bolivar Flores told the assemblage. “And in this case, Mike saved lives. He made sure that other members made it
home to their families and that makes a huge, huge mark for a man, to know that you can say, ‘Hey, there’s a family out
there right now that is breaking bread at the table because of Mike.’”

Added Flores, 24, formerly of Arden Heights: “Everything that I am and everything I have become as a United States
Marine and as a man is a tribute to the friendship I had with Mike.”

The vigil was fraught with tearful embraces by family and friends. But Robert Ollis found the strength to speak lovingly,
even humorously, of his son.

“It’s still a mystery to me how he got those Good Conduct medals,” he said, referencing two of his son’s numerous
awards, which also included four Army Commendation Medals, two Army Achievement medals, the Valorous Unit Award,
the meritorious Unit Commendation and two Army Good Conduct Medals, among others.

Not that Michael Ollis wasn’t refreshingly regular, the father said: When he’d return home from various tours, he’d throw
rollicking house parties, hit Dunkin’ Donuts with friends and even wreak “a little bit of mayhem at the bars on Forest
Avenue and Manhattan.”

Ollis began his deployment to Afghanistan in January. Prior to that, he served in Iraq from April 2008 to May 2009,
followed by a deployment to Afghanistan from June 2010 to May 2011.

His Petrides teacher Diane Cundari of New Dorp, spoke for all the faculty: “Mike, it was my pleasure, as it was of many
of my friends and colleagues, to be your teacher.”
She noted that her former student was all but a member of her family, one who visited to read with her sons, jump with
them on the trampoline, play “Starwars Battlefront” or “just drink me out of Tropicana orange juice with ice.”

“Our hearts are broken but we come tonight to remember the man, the soldier and the loving boy,” Ms. Cundari
concluded. “You are in our hearts, on our minds, and will never be forgotten. And when the dust settles and all is said
and done, the world will know the true hero you are and were to this American country.”

Ollis’ sister Kimberly Loschiavo of Spotswood, N.J., recalled she was 14 when her brother was born to Linda Ollis. And
even though she became a second mother to him, she said she was the one who learned from him; she called on those
present to imitate Michael’s passion, loyalty, selflessness, forgiveness and devotion to duty.