NCDOT honors 23 Highway Patrol officers murdered on the job that was previously overlooked.

The funeral for A.J. Stocks, a state policeman whose car was struck by a garbage truck close to Wake Tech’s southern campus in 2008, drew hundreds of people. After serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, Stocks, a veteran of the Army and Marines, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

However, Stocks did not receive a monument that is often given to state troopers who are killed while performing their duties: a bridge that was built in his honor. He wasn’t the only person that got passed over.

The State Highway Patrol came to the conclusion that 23 of the 70 employees who had been killed while on duty since 1929 had not had a bridge named in their honor. The patrol’s commander, Col. Freddy Johnson Jr., set out to fix it.

The Highway Patrol asked the North Carolina Board of Transportation for 23 honorary titles starting last spring, and the board approved the last four on Thursday.

The Johnston County N.C. 42 bridge over Interstate 40 will now be known as the Trooper A.J. Stocks Bridge, the board voted last month. Liane, his widow, was there.

She told the board of directors that A.J. was a loving son, brother, nephew, husband, parent, Marine, paramedic, soldier, and trooper. He lived for service and had a large heart. I am certain that he is overjoyed to have this bridge dedicated in his honor.

The majority of the people honored by the state’s hundreds of highways, bridges, and interchanges since the 1920s are politicians, commercial magnates, military personnel, or people killed in battle or while doing their official duties.

Recently, a highway interchange or stretch has been named in honor of former Congressmen G.K. Butterfield and David Price, NBA player Steph Curry, St. Augustine’s track and field coach George Williams, and longtime Johnston County announcer Carl Lamm.

The procedure is not automatic; in addition to providing endorsements and documentation proving their deservingness, someone must ask the state Board of Transportation to name a road or bridge in their honor.

Decades later, some honors were granted.Why the 23 members of the Highway Patrol were disregarded is unknown.

Many passed away decades earlier, perhaps even before the custom was established. This fall, almost 85 years after Patrolman Henry T. Timberlake was killed in a collision on what was then the Fayetteville-Dunn Highway, the Cumberland County bridge over Interstate 95 on Smithfield Road was named in his honor.

Patrolman Buck Fidler was one of three troopers honored Thursday who lost their lives nearly 75 years ago in a motorcycle accident in Davidson County in 1936. First Sgt. Joseph Leonard said it was hard to find someone in Fidler’s family because he was single and had no kids.

However, Leonard found a relative in Tennessee who claimed to have heard of Fidler and to have just crossed a bridge near her home that was devoted to a state police officer. She questioned whether Fidler had received such an honor. Leonard told her that Fidler will be honored with a name for the I-85 bridge that crosses NC 109 in Davidson County.

Leonard informed the board that it was simply unreal to hear the excitement in her voice. Even though it happened in 1936, the family members of our slain troopers and patrolmen greatly value what we as the North Carolina Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol are doing now.

Patrolman Thomas B. Whatley, Terry Peacock’s uncle, was shot and killed in 1947 in Graham County by an alcoholic man; she had never met him. However, two of her family members are now named after her father’s brother Tom, after whom she grew up hearing tales.

On Thursday, Peacock told board members, “We are so grateful that he is being remembered.” “This means the world to our family,” she remarked, sobbing.

Stokes and other servicemen being honored have recently passed away, so their memories are still clear.

In 1994, Officer Jackie L. Daniel, then 43, was killed after being hit while helping a stranded motorist on Mecklenburg County’s Interstate 85. Last month, the board decided to honor him by naming the N.C. 73 bridge over the highway in nearby Cabarrus County.

Board members were informed by his daughter, Ashlyn Daniel Letourneau, that her father was a quiet man who was enthusiastic about helping others in his community and his career.

Letourneau told the crowd, “My family hopes that when people see my dad’s name on the bridge, it’s not to remember the tragedy of his death but to remember how he lived his life.”

Six of the 70 troopers who lost their lives while on duty were riding motorcycles, and most of them were killed in collisions. However, four people lost their lives in plane or helicopter disasters, and 21 people were shot dead. Complications from COVID-19 contracted on the job led to the deaths of two people.

Colonel Johnson told the board last month that all of these guys gave their lives for the state of North Carolina. I also want to thank you on behalf of the whole Highway Patrol for assisting us in fixing this by traveling back in time.

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