A Villager has received the prestigious Chapel of Four Chaplains Award.
Reggie Nealy of the Village of Piedmont was presented with the Chapel of Four Chaplains Humanitarian Award at the 2021 Marine Corps League Department of Florida Fall Conference.
The Chapel of the Four Chaplains Legion of Honor Award recognizes and honors outstanding members of society whose lives model the giving spirit and unconditional service to community, nation, and humanity without regard to race, religion, or creed exemplified so dramatically by the Four Chaplains.
Joining the Marine Corps out of high school in 1966, the Pottstown, Pa. native was sent to Vietnam, where he ended up working in a small unit that worked with the Vietnamese militia protecting villages at the foot of a mountain range near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He received a Purple Heart.
Nealy had a 26-year career teaching in the Criminal Justice Department of West Chester College near Philadelphia. Prior to that, he was a police officer.
He and his wife moved to The Villages in 2013.
In 1943 during World War II, a refurbished troop ship, The Dorchester, carrying 902 troops was torpedoed by a German U233 submarine 150 miles from Greenland. Four Army Chaplains, two Protestant ministers, a Roman Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi, organized evacuation from the sinking ship. When they gave away the last of the life jackets, the chaplains took off their own, handing them to the next four GI’s. The frigid water and freezing air temperatures promised certain death for the chaplains. The 230 survivors that made it into life rafts before the Dorchester sank, reported seeing the chaplains with linked arms singing, praying and laughing as the ship sank.
The four chaplains who performed this selfless and heroic act were U.S. Army Lieutenants, Rev. George L. Fox (Methodist), Rev. Clark V. Poling (Reformed Church in America), Rabbi Alexander D. Goode (Jewish) and Father John P. Washington (Roman Catholic).
On Dec. 19, 1944, all four Chaplains were posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross. Congress also attempted to award the Medal of Honor to the four chaplains, but requirements for that medal called for heroism performed “under fire”. Because their actions took place after the ship was torpedoed, they were not performed “under fire.”
On July 14, 1960, Members of Congress unanimously approved a special medal that would carry the same weight and importance as the Medal of Honor. In January of 1961, the Four Chaplains’ Medal, was presented posthumously to the next of kin of each of the Four Chaplains. This heroic act has been memorialized in many ways, including a commemorative stamp, songs, films, many works of art and architecture to name a few. In 1988, Feb. 3 was established by a unanimous act of Congress, as an annual “Four Chaplains Day.”
