VFW Post in Medford to soon be renamed for Green Beret and hometown hero Staff Sgt. Keith Bishop

Keith Bishop was a Green Beret who was killed in Afghanistan in the war on terror, but never received the same public attention as another decorated hero from that era who also attended Patchogue-Medford High School.

Now a spotlight is shining on him as the VFW Post in Medford renames itself in honor of Staff Sgt. Bishop, a Medford native. He died in 2009 while on an arms and drugs interdiction mission aimed at crippling the Taliban.

“I thought, ‘How come I never heard of this kid before?' ” said John Reuter, an Army veteran who spearheaded the effort to rename the post. “I’ve been living in Medford for 20 years. It seems like a lot of people in Medford never heard of him until I started putting out the word in his honor.”

Bishop attended Patchogue-Medford High School a few years after Michael P. Murphy, who went on to become a highly decorated and famous Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005.

Murphy has a museum, a post office, ballfields, parks and other sites named after him, along with books and movies about him. VFW organizers say that although Murphy rightly deserves the acclaim, they hope Bishop and others like him are not forgotten.

Bishop is the only native of Medford killed in the war on terror. Murphy grew up in Patchogue.

For decades the VFW Post was named for a World War I veteran who had no connection to Medford — he was from Yaphank.

The renaming ceremony will take place Oct. 22 at the post at 507 Long Island Ave. Some of Bishop's relatives plan to travel to the post from their homes in Pennsylvania.

Thirteen years after his death at age 28, the loss is still painful, said one of his sisters, Janice Sites.

“It was devastating. He was like the baby of our family,” said Sites, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “It’s tough on my parents. My mom — you can see it. It’s changed her a lot.”

Bishop was one of several Green Berets — an elite group of soldiers that is the Army equivalent of the Navy SEALs — assigned to the mission in Afghanistan on Oct. 26, 2009.

The covert action in the Badghis Province in western Afghanistan was aimed at stemming the sale of heroin-producing opium. The Taliban used the proceeds to pay for bombs, guns and other items.

The nighttime attack on the insurgents’ compound was a success, with a dozen enemy fighters killed in a firefight, the Pentagon said. But as the U.S. troops’ MH-47 helicopter lifted off, the flight crew was blinded by dust kicked up by propeller wash. The chopper clipped a tall structure and fell to the ground.

Seven U.S. troops and three Drug Enforcement Administration personnel were killed.

When Bishop’s body was returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, along with other fallen soldiers from the mission, President Barack Obama was there to meet them as they came off a C-17 cargo plane.

Obama, visibly distressed, consoled relatives who had gathered there, including Bishop’s.

Sites recalled the moment as surreal, clouded by the pain Bishop’s family felt.

“It’s an honor to meet a president, but you are just kind of numb from everything,” she said. “It’s hard to even believe it’s happening at the time. You’re not even processing it until weeks later.”

Bishop’s father, Robert, said at the time that he spoke with Obama.

"I said, 'I hope God gives you the answer on how to end this,’ ” Bishop said of his exchange with the president. "If he pulls out, it is as if they won. But if he stays in, it's like a meat grinder for the men and women who he will have to send there."

The United States did eventually pull out, in August 2021, when President Joe Biden — who had served as Obama’s vice president — ordered all troops home in what critics called a chaotic withdrawal.

Bishop’s death was noted across New York State at the time, as then-Gov. David A. Paterson ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at all government buildings in the state on Nov. 4, 2009.

Bishop had grown up in Medford with an interest in snowboarding, though he did not play organized sports much, his sister said.

He graduated in 1999. The terrorist attacks two years later in 2001 changed him, she said.

“After 9/11 he felt like he wanted to do something for his country, he wanted to be something greater than himself,” Sites said. “He really thought that he could make a difference.”

He joined the Army in 2002, and it transformed him, she said.

“He really excelled when he joined the Army, like he found his place,” Sites said. “I think he really liked being in the military, and that’s why he went on to become a Green Beret. I think he wanted to prove to himself and keep pushing himself to do it.”

He served a tour in Iraq from August 2004 to August 2005, and by the summer of 2009 was headed to Afghanistan. On the Fourth of July weekend, some of his family traveled to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to visit him and his wife, Maggie.

It was the last time they saw him alive.

A childhood friend, Matt Catapano, said the renaming of the VFW Post was a long overdue honor for Bishop.

“This is a local guy that just gave his life and became a hero,” he said. “He died doing something that he was passionate about and he found passion, and not everyone can do that in life.”