Sherwood Boehlert: “today we have the privilege of honoring our fallen hero, U.S. Army Captain George A. Wood. The bill before us would…”

“today we have the privilege of honoring our fallen hero, U.S. Army Captain George A. Wood. The bill before us would rename the Pitcher Street Post Office in Utica, New York, the George A. Wood Post Office Building, which is a fitting tribute to a man who paid the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedom and our security. Captain Wood bravely served our Nation in Iraq where he met an untimely death on November 20, 2003. However, his memory will live on. Every day, Captain Wood will be in the hearts of his family and his friends and his classmates and his comrades and our neighbors by virtue of the naming of this public facility, this Federal facility in his honor. He is survived by his wife Lisa and his 6-year-old daughter Maria, and to them we send the Nation's condolences on your great loss of yesteryear and our optimism on a more promising future because of what the Captain Woods do so often for so many. Captain Wood was born and raised in upstate New York's beautiful Mohawk Valley. He was an accomplished athlete at Notre Dame Junior Senior High School, and if you are from our neck of the woods, you know those teams are just dynamite. He excelled at both football and track and field. He was also, and this is very important, a superstar in the classroom. He graduated not just from Cornell University but later earned master's degrees from both the State University at New York in Albany and State University at New York in Cortland.…”