This memorial to Christian Koch, Daniel Prial and Steven Skoda from C Company of the 1st Battalion, 171st General Support Aviation Battalion at the site of the crash of the New York Army National Guard helicopter was put up by Marvin Vahue, Mark Winship, Cory Gates and Jerry Fox.
Photo by Donna MacKenzie
Residents of Mendon are used to helicopters flying in the sky above them as they are often in the flight path of Mercy Flight choppers flying patients to Strong Memorial Hospital or military helicopters from the Army Aviation Support facility at the Rochester International Airport conducting training missions. However, things just didn’t seem right on the night of January 20.
33 WASHINGTON Sgt. Ryan Murphy and Sgt. Timothy Stabell, members of the New York Army National Guard’s 206th Military Police Company, spent most of 2020 on active duty.
The two men, along with other members of the Latham, New York-based 206th, spent ten months in Afghanistan as a personal security detachment for a key leader.
Now, they’re back on security duty again, along with up to 25,000 other National Guard Soldiers and Airmen from throughout the country, on duty in Washington, D.C., in advance of the presidential inauguration on January 20.
“Leaving with such short notice was the most challenging part of this operation, so far,” Murphy said, as he explained his experience in the District.
Christian Koch never would have kept them waiting.
On Wednesday evening, when Koch s family first heard rumblings on social media about a military helicopter that crashed in Mendon, they tried to call him.
Two helicopters had gone out for a training exercise that night, said his sister-in-law Aimee Koch. Frantically, they tried to figure out which aircraft he was on. It became increasingly clear as we tried to reach him by cellphone that he was involved, she said. Christian never would have made anybody worry. . As time went by and we didn t get that call, we knew.
Koch, 39, died Wednesday along with two other New York Army National Guard soldiers when their UH-60 medical evacuation helicopter crashed while on a routine training mission just after 6:30 p.m.
Created: January 22, 2021 05:44 PM
MENDON, N.Y. (WHEC) Two of the New York Army National Guard members who lost their lives in the helicopter crash in Mendon on Wednesday, grew up in other parts of the state, but had made Rochester their permanent home.
Chief Warrant Officer Steve Skoda is from Johnstown, New York. He was a 35-year veteran of the Army and the New York Army National Guard. He flew UH-1 helicopters for nearly 30 years and as a senior instructor pilot taught and mentored hundreds of other soldiers. He was twice deployed to Afghanistan.
“He was, to my estimation, with everything that has gone on with our country lately, he was the embodiment of a real American, a real patriot. He dedicated his whole life to flying all over the country rescuing people and he believed in it. He didn t have to go to Afghanistan two years ago, he was the senior man but he felt it was his duty and he went and he went for a year at age 54,” Skoda’s friend and neighbor