On the Friday before Veterans Day, Boone hosted a Veterans Day salute. At this event was alumnus Brandon Bailey.
After graduating from Boone in 1993, Bailey went on to be in the Marine Corps, where he was part of missions all over the globe: from the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, to Iraq and later to Afghanistan.
“Iraq was paradise compared to Afghanistan,” Bailey said.
Afghanistan was his last deployment because of an injury in 2009 that caused him to retire.
With his eyes looking at the ground of Afghanistan and his feet pointing towards the sky, Gunnery Sergeant Bailey was found rotated 180 degrees at the waist after the truck he was in struck an improvised explosive device (IED) that erupted.
Bailey and the humvee flew around 140 feet from the spot of the initial blast. A fellow marine approached Bailey under the truck, thinking he was cut in half at the waist, yet not seeing any blood until he looked inside the truck.
Upon looking, he saw Bailey’s knees and his toes pointed upwards and his chest and nose facing downwards.
There were a number of injuries that had happened in the accident.
”It crushed me across the waist,” Bailey said. “I had a shattered pelvis that came out of my right thigh, my right hip was crushed, my left hip was broken in 3 places, my back was broken in five places. I had a ruptured bladder and perforated bowel. I was torn open from the inside of my thigh into my groin, all the way to my sternum.”
From there he was put on a helicopter and flown to his fire base where they put his pelvis and hips back together. He then needed three external fixers, a medical device to keep fractured bones stabilized.
From there, he was flown to Germany and then onto Maryland, but some things didn’t go as planned.
“(The medical team) lost me twice on the flight,” Bailey said. “I got up in the altitude and I started swelling and I just started hurting, and I just remember crying and just begging for more pain medications then I blacked out … That’s the last thing I remember on that flight.”
After waking up from a coma in the hospital in Maryland, doctors decided to put him into a medically induced coma so he could be calm and heal.
“After that it was just surgeries and therapy,” Bailey said.
The doctors told him he would have 30 days to live because of the infection from the dirt and splintered bone in his injuries.
When he beat the infection and didn’t die in 30 days, they told him he wouldn’t be able to walk.
He started walking a year and a half later.
While he was in recovery, his friend sent him an email that had an attached report about the IED explosion.
The attachment named who was injured and who had died. There were five people who were listed as wounded in action, however only one was listed as killed in action.
Bailey was the one.
“I read it probably 300 times that night,” Bailey said.
Although he was alive and reading, the report still listed him as dead because people thought he could not have survived.
Bailey went into physical therapy the day after reading the article and told his physical therapist about it. His physical therapist called Bailey a “dead man walking.”
Bailey now has a tattoo of that saying on his forearm.
Being away from Boone for almost 30 years, he came back to celebrate Veterans Day with the school. The celebration included a performance from the band and choir, a breakfast for the veterans, and two guest speakers, one of them being a retired teacher from Boone.
The school has already decided for Bailey to come back next year and be a speaker.
Being at the school for the celebration brought back many memories for Bailey.
When Bailey was a student at Boone, the school was smaller, but it was a positive environment. He got along with everyone and even played baseball for Boone.
Bailey had multiple teachers as a student at Boone, however one that stood out to him the most was business teacher Cindy Wallace. He described her as being very “impactful” and “a great person then, and a great person now.”
While talking to her about this subject, Wallace described Bailey in class as being “outstanding,” “respectful,” and “very well-liked.”
“Brandon was one of my favorite students,” Wallace said. “In class, he was a leader to his fellow classmates”
Wallace described him as being so kind and funny and always looking out for others. She said he also made her feel better about coming back from maternity leave, and he always knew how to make people smile.
“His love for people shined through his actions and personality. I am proud to have had Brandon as a student,” she said.
Wallace said that when she first read about Bailey’s injuries in a news article in the Boone County Recorder, it brought tears to her eyes.
“I couldn’t imagine the sacrifices he had made and all that he had gone through defending the United States,” she said.
“I reached out to him, to thank him for his service and tell him how proud I was of him. Of course, being the honorable young man that he is, Brandon came to BCHS to visit me and thank me for reaching out.”
“I saw that same sweet smile and kind eyes when he came to see me,” Wallace said. “He had been through so much but had not lost any of the qualities I admired and remembered.”
