On the last Monday in May each year, many Americans pause to remember military service members who died while serving their country. For Wildwood’s Ellen Dimock, who lost her son Joey in 2010, that remembrance never ends.
“Joey is missed every day of every month of every year,” Dimock said. “He’s been gone 16 years. He’s my everyday Memorial Day.”
Dimock was a featured speaker at the Lake Bluff Memorial Day ceremony held May 25 at the Village Green with about 200 people in attendance.
“Memorial Day is a day to honor, a day to remember, a day to understand the men and women who lost their lives in service to our country in a time of war. I will be telling you about one of those men,” Dimock told observers, her voice occasionally cracking with emotion.
Dimock described her son’s life on what would have been his 37th birthday, highlighting his achievements as a child and teenager. At age 16, he earned the rank of Eagle Scout, and one of his projects involved collecting about 200 tattered American flags where they would eventually be cut and burned for proper retirement.
When Joey was 17, he came home one day with a military recruiter, determined to enlist in the U.S. Army, Dimock said.
“I can still see Joey just jumping up and down, telling me that this is what he wanted. I told him they’d be harder on him than I ever was. He continued to say, ‘Yes, Mom, this is what I want,’” she recalled.
Following graduation from Warren Township High School, Joey Dimock went to Fort Benning, Georgia, for basic training before being deployed to Iraq in 2008, as the war there continued.
After returning to the United States, Dimock passed the rigorous testing required to become a U.S. Army Ranger, his mother proudly said.
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Dimock was deployed a second time, this time to Afghanistan in 2009, where he lost friends in combat and later honored them through tattoos on his body.
A third deployment occurred in July 2010 when Dimock went to Salerno, Afghanistan, where he worked as an ammunition specialist before being killed in an accidental explosion.
Several months later, a United States Army colonel provided the Dimock family with a final report on the events surrounding Joey Dimock’s death and offered a suggestion.
“He told me to continue to tell Joey’s story. Joey is a son, he’s a brother. He’s a friend, he’s an Eagle Scout,” said the Gold Star mother. “He is a U.S. Army Ranger. Today would have been Joey’s 37th birthday. There will be no celebration, no cake, no candles. There will be some tears, a silent moment. I remember a moment. A memorial moment. Honor. Remember, understand. Rangers lead the way.”
The honors and memories have continued for Joey Dimock. Locally, part of Route 120 in Lake County has been named in his honor, a Grayslake U.S. Post Office was renamed in Dimock’s memory in 2023, and the family is set to hold an annual memorial golf outing June 12 at Deerpath Golf Course in Lake Forest, where more than $120,000 has been raised for goods and services benefiting veterans.
Other parts of the ceremony included an American flag raising featuring Michael Dimock, one of Joey Dimock’s brothers, performances of patriotic music by the Lake Forest High School band and vocalist Lily Kienzle, and a recitation of fallen soldiers from the area dating back to the Civil War by former Village President Kathy O’Hara.
Another featured speaker, Lake Forest resident and retired U.S. Marine Corps member Charles Walgreen, offered his perspective on the solemnity of the holiday.
“Memorial Day is not Veterans Day,” he said. “It’s not a celebration of those who served and came home. It’s something harder. Something heavier. It’s the day we turn our hearts toward our brothers and sisters who did not come home. The men and women who woke up one morning, perhaps in a foxhole in France, a jungle in Vietnam, a desert in Iraq, or a mountain in Afghanistan, and made the ultimate sacrifice.”
Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.