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Photos: A somber procession home for Staten Island's Sgt.

Michael Ollis

silive.com/news/index.ssf /2013/09/a_somber_procession_home_f or_s.html

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When fallen U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Ollis arrived back on Staten Island, he wasn't alone.

A white hearse carried his body from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to Hanley Funeral Home in New Dorp -- the last
leg of a more than 6,000-mile journey from Ghanzi Province, in Afghanistan, where he was killed in an insurgent attack.

Behind him were 35 motorcycles, flying the flags of the United States of America and the Armed Forces. Fire trucks
offered blinking red lights, a salute, atop every overpass between the Goethels Bridge and the funeral home, which is
just a few blocks away from the Burbank Avenue home where the 24-year-old soldier grew up.

Alongside bikers and veterans, police and firefighters saluted the motorcade -- on a day that fell 12 years after the
terror attacks that killed so many of their own, and launched the war halfway around the world that ultimately claimed
Ollis' life.
As the hearse pulled into the lot, members of Rolling Thunder and the Low Riders Motorcycle Club parked their bikes
and shut their engines. Bikers wiped tears from beneath their sunglasses in the hot sun. Even on a busy street there was
silence as the coffin carrying Ollis, draped in an American flag, was removed.
Pall bearers in military dress uniforms held his casket as a priest offered a prayer. Then they disappeared inside the
funeral home, where Ollis' parents waited in privacy for their son.

"This was as per the family request, that Rolling Thunder do the escort," said Jimmy Carter, 26, of Rossville. "And Mike
was family to me."

Carter and Ollis went to Petrides together, where they both served in the Air Force Junior ROTC.
"It's meaningful. More meaningful than you can ever imagine," Carter said of the escort, tears in his eyes. "I got to bring
my brother home one last time."

On the back of Carter's motorcycle rode Bolivar Flores, a retired U.S. Marine, another high school friend.

"It meant a lot to have all of us together," Carter said, recalling how much Ollis enjoyed it when the trio were able to
reunite. "We brought it together one last time for him."

The effort involved the cooperation of the FDNY, the NYPD, and the Port Authority Police, Michael Garguilo, president of
Rolling Thunder New York 2, noted.

For Carter, it was another chance to remember an outstanding friend.

"Once you met him, you would never not love him," he said.
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