Road sign to honor KIA Guard member killed in Iraq

GLASGOW – On Sunday afternoon, family members and friends of a man whose life was taken in Operation Iraqi Freedom will gather at Sulphur Well for the unveiling of a road sign in his honor.

Army Spec. Eric L. Toth, 21, was killed March 30, 2005, when the Humvee he was in encountered a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device as it was returning from an escort patrol for a convoy along a main supply route in Baghdad, Iraq, according to information posted for the Kentucky Army National Guard Memorial in Frankfort. Two others in his unit, including a brother-in-law, were injured in the explosion.

Toth was born in Glasgow 35 years ago this month. He grew up in Metcalfe County, though, and he graduated from Metcalfe County High School in 2001, joining the Guard in May of that year. He was assigned to A Battery, 1st Battalion, 623rd Field Artillery, based in Tompkinsville, and he was also an employee of Federal-Mogul Motorparts in Glasgow, according to his obituary.

Toth's unit mobilized for OIF in November 2004 and deployed to southwest Asia in January 2005.

Toth's mother, Brenda Paranto, said the sign has been erected near her house, the one where Toth grew up, so she will see it every day, and that's the reason she chose that site.

“It's an honor, because my son is not forgotten,” she said. “It's an honor that his memory still lives on.”

The road sign is part of a campaign that began about three years ago by members of Rolling Thunder, Kentucky Chapter 2, a veterans advocacy organization, to get recognition for veterans, particularly those who died during duty, by adding them into the Purple Heart highways system.

In a remembrance yearbook given to all members of A Battery, the battery commander in Iraq, Capt. John Holmes, had written about Toth, according to an April 2006 report by the Glasgow Daily Times about a ceremony to award Purple Heart medals to the two men who were wounded in the explosion that killed Toth.

“Spc. Eric Toth dreamed not only of being more than he was, but he took every advantage to make his dreams happen. He worked as hard as he could just not to better himself, but to better the team and protect his brothers,” Holmes had written.

The commander also, when writing regarding his soldiers in general, added: “Our communities earned a new view and our appreciation. They supported us and never expected anything in return. ... We were heroes to them before we left Kentucky and we never knew it.”

The unveiling of the sign along Mitchell Edwards Road, just off Ky. 70 across from Williams & Tucker Auto Parts, is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Sunday.