Tentative services set for reservist killed in Jordan

Funeral at Waycross school precedes burial of Kennedy Sanders.

By Joe Kovac Jr.

Tentative arrangements have been made for the funeral of Army Reservist Sgt. Kennedy L. Sanders, one of three Georgia soldiers killed late last month in a drone attack on their base in Jordan.

Sanders, 24, who was posthumously promoted from specialist, will be buried Feb. 17 at Oakland Cemetery in her hometown of Waycross, the city manager there, Ulysses D. Rayford, said Wednesday.

A funeral for Sanders is set to begin earlier that day at Ware County Middle School, Rayford said. He said there will be a viewing the day before at Waycross City Auditorium. No times have been set.

Gov. Brian Kemp has ordered that flags on all state buildings and grounds be flown at halfstaff the day of Sanders’ funeral.

Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah and William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton were also killed in the Jan. 28 drone attack that injured more than 40 others.

Rivers, who was posthumously promoted to staff sergeant, will be honored at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Tabernacle Baptist Church. During a private ceremony afterward, he will be interred at Georgia National Cemetery in Canton, according to details shared Thursday.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is still awaiting funeral information for Moffett, who was posthumously promoted to sergeant.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden met privately last Friday with the families of the killed reservists at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where their remains arrived on an Air Force cargo plane.

Rayford said Sanders’ death “has brought us together as a community.”

At a Waycross City Commission meeting this week, officials told of plans to rename part of Eads Street, where Sanders grew up and her parents still live, “Kennedy L. Sanders Way.”

Last Friday night in Doughboy Park, a near-century-old war memorial across from the Waycross Rail Depot, locals saluted Sanders at a gathering for the city’s First Friday event. On the lawn, a photograph of Sanders sat perched on an easel ringed by tiny American flags.

Mayor Michael-Angelo James spoke and offered “our condolences and our sympathies to Shawn and Oneida Sanders, to their entire family and to the friends.”

“And to each one of you, my brothers and sisters, we are commemorating her life, her legacy and the love that she has shown in our community as well as to our world,” he said. “Not only did she give her life. She gave all.”