Dinner to benefit families of late Stewart Marines
Proceeds from the GOP event featuring Gen. David Petraeus are being redirected in light of the July 10 plane crash.
CENTRAL VALLEY, N.Y. » Proceeds from Monday night’s Orange County Republican Party dinner, at which retired Gen. David Petraeus is to speak, will go to the families of the nine Marines based at Stewart Airport who died in a July 10 plane crash in Mississippi.
The dinner originally was to be a GOP fundraisder, but Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus said that’s changed in light of the crash.
“All the proceeds, 100 percent, are going to go to the nine families of the Marines that we lost a few weeks ago, and we are going to have members of the military, including some of the family members of the fallen, all rallying around to raise money for it,” Neuhaus said.
The dinner is scheduled for 6 to 9 p.m. Monday at the Falkirk Estate, 206 Smith Clove Road, Central Valley. Tickets are $60 per person. (Meet-and-greet tickets are $250 each.) Tickets can be reserved at (845) 610-5233.
The nine Marines from Stewart, as well as six Marines and a Navy sailor stationed in North Carolina, died when the KC130 transport and refueling plane in which they were flying crashed about 4 p.m. July 10 near Itta Bena, Miss.
The KC-130, en route from North Carolina to California, belonged to the Stewart-based Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 452, Marine Aircraft Group 49, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing.
The cause of the crash has not been determined.
Petraeus is an Orange County native and Cornwall High School graduate who commanded coalition forces in Iraq. He later served as CIA director in the Obama administration until resigning in 2012 over leaking classified information to a biographer with whom he was having an affair.