Derek John Farley, a 24-year-old Army Staff Sgt, was killed on August 17, 2010. He grew up in Nassau Lake. The village is shocked by his death and mourns the loss of the fallen soldier.
Farley graduated from Columbia High School in 2004. He received the Purple Heart in 2007, after he was wounded in Iraq. Farley worked as a bomb technician in Afghanistan. On Tuesday morning he was attempting to disarm an improvised explosive device when it was detonated and killed him.
Farley’s father is a Vietnam veteran and his mother works at the Hudson Valley Community College, where recently she helped to bring back a veterans club that had been inactive since the Vietnam War era.
Members of the community fly their flags in honor of the fallen soldier and keep his family and friends in their thoughts.
