The memory is still fresh for Pamela Sykes-Barrett, even eight years later.
As she stood on the Strip outside the Cosmopolitan at the Windy25 Memorial 5K on Saturday, her mind drifted back to that tragic day in 2005. Her eyes welled up with tears as she stared off into the distance, looking back on the day she heard the bad news.
The day she learned her son, Spc. Pendleton Sykes II, and 15 others died in a helicopter crash in Ghazni, Afghanistan.
She's not alone. Sykes-Barrett is surrounded by mothers, fathers, spouses, children, and extended family, who also lost loved ones in the crash. For the past three years, many of them have gathered for this race. They form a family forever unified by a single tragedy, and this race is their reunion.
"It's hard every year," said Gloria Hackwith, who lost her son Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Clint Prather. "We're glad to be here because we've become a family. It's nice."
The Windy25 Memorial 5K is held to commemorate the 11 passengers and five fallen members of the Windy25 flight crew and to raise money for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. Race organizer Craig Wilhelm '93, who was the commander of the Chinook Company when the helicopter crashed, said about 500 participants signed up for the third annual race, raising more than $46,000 for TAPS.
Wilhelm said the race has raised about $130,000 in three years, but more importantly, it has increased awareness of the people who died in combat and the families they left behind.