Several hundred friends and family members paid their respects Thursday to Chief Warrant Officer 2 Don C. Viray, an Army helicopter pilot killed in Afghanistan who was remembered as humble, confident, caring — and true to his Hawaii roots, always laid-back.
"He wasn’t like all the other pilots in the unit that had big egos," said fellow pilot Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ray Smith.
Viray, he said, got along with everybody.
The 2004 Roosevelt High School graduate, who as a child played Army behind a relative’s Kalihi Valley home and later loved his job as a helicopter pilot, was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.
Three Hawaii Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopters passed overhead, three rifle volleys were fired and taps was played before seven soldiers in dress uniforms escorted the 25-year-old’s casket to the grave site.
"He’s achieved so many things, but he’s never gone out and bragged about it," said his sister, Sherry Viray.
She remembered telling him that he was a hero because he had been on the front lines as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in Iraq and, more recently, in Afghanistan.
"But he always said that he’s not a hero even though he was exposed (to combat) — it’s the people that die and left loved ones behind that are heroes, and I guess now he’s a hero," his sister said.
The Waipahu man was one of four Schofield Barracks soldiers killed when their Black Hawk crashed April 19 in what the Pentagon said was bad weather on a night flight in southern Afghanistan.
Viray is survived by his sister and his parents, Luz and Leodindo Viray.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Nicholas S. Johnson, 27, of San Diego; Spc. Dean R. Shaffer, 23, of Pekin, Ill.; and Spc. Chris J. Workman, 33, of Boise, Idaho, also died when the helicopter went down in Helmand province.
The soldiers were with A Company, 2nd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, out of Wheeler Army Airfield.
The deaths were the first for the 25th CAB on a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan that began in January for 2,600 Hawaii soldiers.
The mood Thursday was somber at Schofield Barracks as well, where a 6-foot black granite monument was unveiled to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team’s Iraq and Afghanistan casualties — including the 20 soldiers lost on a deployment to eastern Afghanistan that recently ended.
Viray, who was born in Tripler Army Medical Center, grew up alongside his sister and cousins and used to sneak into the Plaza Hotel pool near the airport, where he learned to swim, his family said.
He was part of Junior ROTC in high school and joined the Hawaii Army National Guard at 17 with his parents’ permission.
Sgt. 1st Class Cesar Ramirez, a Hawaii National Guard soldier, remembered that Viray worked on radar and navigation systems for Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters, but he wanted to do more.
"He loved the military. That’s why he wanted to go active duty to be a pilot," Ramirez said.
Biruk Abraham, a former instructor pilot now out of the Army who flew with Viray in Iraq on a 2009-2010 deployment, said Viray was a natural pilot and "one of the sharpest guys I’ve ever met" — but someone who never sought the spotlight.
"He absolutely loved (flying). It was everything for him," Abraham said. "It was always fun flying with him because it reminded me why I got into it myself, because it’s easy to forget when you get into the routine of missions."
Viray would say, "We have the best job in the world. I can’t believe we get paid to do this," Abraham recalled.
Asked how the family is doing several weeks after the crash, Sherry Viray said, "Not well."
"I always believed that he would come back, that I would see him again," she said. "This is just something new that I don’t know how to deal with. I don’t think anybody knows how to deal with these kinds of things."
Her brother was the pilot in command on the downed chopper, she said.
She’s also waiting for answers as to what happened that night in southern Afghanistan.
Her brother’s Black Hawk was a "chase" aircraft following a medevac helicopter as they responded to a suicide attack that killed some Afghan police officers and wounded others.
A Pentagon spokesman said after the crash that it appeared that bad weather was the primary cause of the accident.
Sherry Viray doesn’t think so.
"If you look at the casualty report from the government itself, they list the cause of death as hostile fire," she said. "I’m not 100 percent sure of anything, and we do not have the full investigation report yet."
But she believes it may have been "some kind of weapon from ground to air."
"The other chopper made it through that weather. Every other chopper made it through that weather. Why would that one chopper not? There has to be something else going on," she said.
