Thurman Tormey Family

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In remembrance

Denis Thurman Sr.

Born: July 22,1933 passed away on October 15th, 2011

Leesburg Union Cemetery
Leesburg, VA 20176

Shane Lair (Jean's son) at The Tahoe Show

Shane placed 1st in the Super Heavy Weight Division and 2nd in Masters 40+

Congratulations!

Shane Lair placed sixth in the Masters Figure 45+ at the

NPC Contra Costa Bodybuilding Figure Championships (NQ) held May 7, 2011 at Hayward, California
Bodybuilding.com

 Lorena Agatha Thurman

http://www.loudounfuneralchapel.com/

 The funeral mass is Monday Dec 20th at 10:30am at St. Francis DeSales Catholic Church in Purcellville, VA,

internment at Union Cemetery in Leesburg, VA

Our deepest sympathies go out to Denis and his family.

 Congratulations, Tori!

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

DENNIS THURMAN OBTAINS THE CERTIFIED WEALTH STRATEGIST® DESIGNATION

FOCUSED ON INNOVATIVE FINANCIAL STRATEGIES, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
TO HELP CLIENTS ACHIEVE THEIR INVESTMENT OBJECTIVES

Sioux Falls, SD – January 6, 2009

Dennis Thurman with First Allied Securities, Inc. has been awarded the Certified Wealth Strategist® designation.

The Certified Wealth Strategist® education and designation are administered by Cannon Financial Institute, in which the CWS® Board of Standards awards to individuals who successfully complete initial and rigorous ongoing certification requirements.
 Mr. Thurman successfully completed instructor trained courses which were held through NextGen University at Georgia Tech University in October 2007 and The University of Texas at Austin in November of 2008.

Mr. Thurman was selected by his parent company, Advanced Equities Financial Corp.

(Advanced Equities), as he has consistently demonstrated excellence in his commitment to continually meet and exceed the client and the firm’s expectations. “As one of the top producers in our family of companies, Mr. Thurman already possesses many of the traits successful advisors share,” said Dwight Badger, CEO and Co-Founder of Advanced Equities. “Now that he has access to additional tools and sought-after products, we anticipate he will be able to provide unique opportunities for his clients that few advisors can match,” Badger said.  The NextGen Platform is a combination of implementing proven techniques and strategies  and providing clients access to exclusive products. A suite of differentiated products and services, such as alternative investments, in-house experts in asset management, complex insurance case management, qualified plan design, financial planning and comprehensive wealth management strategies.

Dennis Thurman has been with First Allied in Sioux Falls, SD since 1993 and lives in Sioux Falls with his wife Jamie and their 5 children.Mr. Thurman is a registered representative 
 and is also an Investment Advisory Representative through First Allied. First Allied is a subsidiary of Advanced Equities, which is a leading provider of investment management, securities brokerage, and venture capital investment banking services. Mr. Thurman belongs to one of the nation’s top independent financial services organizations with approximately 1,000 financial consultants administering more than $40 billion in client assets.

 Advanced Equities was ranked number 11 on Inc. magazine’s list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in America and was the No. 1 brokerage firm on the list for 2006. 
 

Letter from Kevin on April 15, 2009:

FAMILY MEMBERS:
 
THE BIG DAY HAS ARRIVED !
 
 
JACK'S BOOK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED !
 
www.authorhouse.com  
 
TYPE IN   "THURMAN" AND IT COMES RIGHT UP...
 
TITLE:      WE WERE IN THE FIRST WAVES OF
                 STEEL AMTRACS
                 WHO LANDED ON IWO JIMA
 
It is also available on www.amazon.com
 
PLEASE HELP ME NOTIFY ALL FAMILY MEMBERS ! ! !
 
 
KEVIN

A wonderful article written by Steve Young from the Argus Leader:

March 21, 2008

S.D. native finally gets his due

Book helps bring 'unknown' Marine's family secret to light

Steve Young
syoung@argusleader.com

In the photograph, he is smiling, his cap thrust high in the air, his fellow Marines rejoicing beside him as they pose beneath an American flag.

Minutes earlier, that same flag was immortalized by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal when he snapped the transcendent image of World War II - five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the Stars and Stripes above Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. It was Feb. 23, 1945.

At the time, battle-weary Marines wept at the sight. Hundreds of ships in the fleet that observed the flag saluted it with salvoes. And Rosenthal's lens captured a second image - 18 Marines jubilant before the first foreign flag to fly over Japanese territorial soil in 4,000 years.

In time, all 18 would be identified except for the one man standing at the far left, the one smiling, his cap held high. For him, the caption beneath always read "unknown."

But not any more. It turns out he was a 19-year-old South Dakota farm boy from Mitchell named Jack Ryland Thurman.

The discovery was made after James Bradley's book, "Flags of Our Fathers," was published in 2000. Thurman's relatives began telling others they knew who was in the photo.

Moments before the photo was made, "they had asked for volunteers from the 27th Regiment of the Marine Corps' 5th Division to help the 28th Regiment secure the mountain," Thurman, 82, recalled from his home in Boulder, Colo.

"I was standing down alongside the mountain, watching them gather for a picture," he said. "A guy called out, 'Hey, get up here.' I said I was with the 27th Regiment. He said, 'Makes no difference. You're one of us.' "

In that instant, Thurman became part of what would be known as the "Gung Ho" photograph. It is a famous shot for the moment in World War II that it represents. But it developed a bit of infamy as well when, days after the events on Mount Suribachi, Rosenthal was asked if he had staged his famous photograph.

Not even aware that his flag-raising photograph had come out and was being hailed around the world, Rosenthal thought they were talking about the "Gung Ho" photograph and confirmed that it was staged. Turned out they actually were referring to the flag-raising photo. Thus Rosenthal found himself battling the last 60 years of his life trying to correct the misconception, said Dan Crawford of the Marines Corps' History Division in Quantico, Va.

Begged to enlist

For Thurman, that single frozen frame of joy falls far short of defining his war experience.

In 1942, the oldest of Jack and Lorraine Thurman's 15 children was begging his father to sign the paperwork for him to enlist. The elder Thurman insisted he needed his 17-year-old son to help out on the family's dairy farm. So young Jack Thurman waited until his 18th birthday - Sept. 27, 1943 - then walked into the recruiter's office in Mitchell.

Seventeen months later, he was storming the beaches at Iwo Jima.

That volcanic island 650 miles south of Tokyo had three airstrips used by the Japanese. Capturing the island was crucial to the Americans for staging an invasion of mainland Japan.

By the time Thurman hit the southern beach, U.S. forces already had softened up the Japanese with B-29 bombing runs and naval bombardments. He scrambled over and around dozens of Japanese soldiers lying dead on the black volcanic sands.

"It was terrible," he said. "Their stomachs were bloated, and some stomachs had broken open. The smell was just horrific."

American forces landed Feb. 19. Four days later, Thurman was fighting in the middle of an airstrip when he looked over his right shoulder and saw the flag going up on 546-foot-high Mount Suribachi.

Tears filled his eyes.

"We'd lost a lot of men between the 19th of February and the 23rd," he explained. "So we weren't ashamed to shed a tear."

Marines' sacrifices

Iwo Jima proved to be the costliest battle in Marine Corps history. Its toll of 6,821 Americans dead, 5,931 of them Marines, accounted for almost one-third of all Marine Corps losses in World War II. Of the six men pictured raising the flag Feb. 23, three of them - Michael Strank, Franklin Sousley and Harlon Block - were dead before the battle ended.

For Japan, it was no better. Of 21,000 soldiers present at the beginning of the fighting, more than 20,000 were killed and only 216 taken prisoner.

"After the war," Thurman said, "I dealt with a lot of sad memories."

But he moved on with his life, got into architectural work and eventually settled in Boulder, where he helped design buildings on the University of Colorado campus.

Family members knew of the picture, knew he was the smiling Marine with his cap in the air. What they never realized was that the image hung in museums and sat in books with a caption beneath it that identified everyone but the unknown serviceman at the left.

Apparently, members of the 28th Regiment had provided identifications for the photo at some point. Because Thurman came late to the photo as a volunteer from the 27th Regiment, no one had his name. And the Marines made no effort to identify him.

"The Marine Corps takes the position that all Marines on Iwo Jima were heroes," Crawford said. "The attempt to identify every Marine in every picture, while it's of interest to everyone, if it's not in the official records, we don't identify them.

"We're not in a position to say 60 years later that this is this Marine or that Marine. It just upsets families and people who thought it was their next of kin, and it's not."

Telling his story

But Thurman's family had no doubt. When "Flags of Our Fathers" came out in 2000, renewing interest in Iwo Jima, they knew the Marine in the book's "Gung Ho" photograph was not unknown.

As word got out about Thurman's role in the photo, his fame rose, particularly in the Boulder area. He's been invited to speak in a number of venues, from Kiwanis clubs in Colorado to the Officers' Club on Okinawa. He tells the story of a young Marine who approached him after his talk in Okinawa and wanted to know whether military training really prepared a person for actual duty.

"That really caught me," Thurman said. "I told him, 'No. Your body is strong, and you're taught to overtake any kind of terrain, any kind of pillbox. But your mind ... is not ready to see what it's looking at on the ground before you.' "

After that, he decided to write a book about his experiences on Iwo Jima. He and his daughter, 44-year-old Navy Cmdr. Karen Thurman, are finishing it up.

In it, he talks about standing behind Ira Hayes in the photograph. Hayes, a Pima Indian, was one of the six men immortalized in the flag-raising photo.

"He was standing in front of me in the picture," Thurman said. "He said, 'Here, I'll kneel down so they'll be able to see you.' "

Hayes, tormented by the fame he received but did not want, would die 10 years later from alcoholism.

Thurman's book will recount many other memories, too, from the constant smell of sulphur on the volcanic island to the scent of death. It is a story worth preserving, Karen Thurman said, about a Marine of whom she and the rest of her family are very proud.

To that end, she said she is going to work to get her father's name placed in that photo caption. She's already honored him by following him into military service. She requested that her first duty station be Camp Pendleton in California because that was his last stop before he left the Marines.

"I wanted that connection just to be able to pick up where he left off, for him and for his buddies who died beside him," she said. "That photo, and everything my father did, is the reason I'm in the military."

Article written by Steve Young, Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, SD

Thank you, Steve!

Dennis Thurman and George W. Bush