Remembering Patrick Lay
Born January 8th, 1990 in Bradenton, Patrick Lay was the grandson and nephew of pastors at Manatee County’s Life Covenant Sanctuary Church. Having grown up around ministry, he attended Community Christian School and Gulf Coast Christian School before entering high school at Braden River in the tenth grade, where he was a member of the school's first graduating class.
AUDIO: Patrick's character (Stefenie Hernandez)
He played varsity football there, wearing his father’s number—eighty-five—and competed on the weightlifting team, as well. He also played a great deal of paintball locally, and enjoyed fishing, hunting, and going to the beach. When not in school, Lay worked part-time at local retailer Come See Come Sav. Described as “witty, yet strong, yet compassionate,” he joined the Army after graduating from high school because he wanted to find a place where he could make a difference.
AUDIO: Life in Bradenton (Stefenie Hernandez)
Lay did exceptionally well in boot camp and became an infantryman with the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, a highly specialized unit and the one that has been deployed more than any other U.S. military division since 2001. Nicknamed the “Spartan Brigade,” the 3rd Brigade Combat Team built an exceptional relationship with their Afghan partners, who dubbed the 3rd BCT “the Tribe of the Crossed Swords.”
In March of 2011, Specialist Lay deployed with the Spartans to Kandahar Province, sent to root out the Taliban from their city of origin. In response to NATO escalation, the Taliban mounted a new offensive involving ambushes, IEDs, assassinations, and suicide attacks. Loyal to his comrades, when Lay was concussed by an IED early in his deployment, he insisted that he remain in Afghanistan to continue serving his team, saying, “I just want to get back to my guys.”
AUDIO: Deployment and the first I.E.D. (Stefenie Hernandez)
On August 11, 2011, while conducting operations along a newly-built road nicknamed the “Montreal bypass” in support of his company’s mission to push south to the Arghandab River, he and four other soldiers from the 3rd Platoon’s 1st Squad were killed when an exceptionally powerful IED blast destroyed their Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All Terrain Vehicle. Lay was twenty-one years old and engaged.
Audio Transcripts