California man spearheads Bigfork Monument for victims of Libya attack

Bill Thomas lives and breathes fire every day.

It’s what he does as a paramedic and firefighter in Thousand Oaks, Calif. That’s why when he learned of the horrific deaths of two people who died in a fire in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, he was moved to honor the men, one of whose parents lived in Bigfork.

After reading in the Bigfork Eagle about Charles Woods and his family moving to Bigfork last year, Thomas was moved to create something special to honor their son, Tyrone. He and Doug Averill, owner of Flathead Lake Lodge, have created a monument to the four people killed in Benghazi and it now sits in at the Lodge.

“I have had this love for Bigfork from the day we went there,” Thomas said. “So reading the article in the Eagle gave the story about Benghazi a life that I hadn’t been thinking about. My first thought was, I know how people make you feel in Bigfork, so I thought wouldn’t it be nice to have something dedicated to their son.”

Averill and Thomas set out to find a large boulder that they could affix a bronze statue of an eagle to. The found the boulder on Lodge property and Averill brought it back to the  Lodge shop in Bigfork to build the monument.

Workers there attached the six-foot bronze of the flying eagle to the boulder, and the monument now stands on the property near the Lodge. The Lodge will have a dedication of the memorial on Sept. 11, 2014, two years after the attacks on the U.S. Embassy killed Tyrone Woods and three others.

Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith, a U.S. Foreign Service information management officer. Early  the next day a second assault targeted a nearby CIA annex about a mile away, killing two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty.

Thomas is selling bracelets to help pay for the monument and pay for costs to fly the victims’ family members out to Bigfork for the September memorial.

His foundation, “To Honor the Four,” will raise scholarships to veterans’ families.

Thomas said despite the notoriety of the Benghazi attacks and the politics that have followed, he’s keeping politics out of it. “It’s not about politics,” Thomas said. “My focus remains on easing the suffering the families are going through. These monuments should be built in every town and city in the country. These four men showed up for work and this is what happened to them. This is my way of thanking those four guys that I’ll never meet.”

Thomas has been visiting Bigfork for several years, and has been a guest at Flathead Lake Lodge since 1998. He serves as a volunteer for the Bigfork Elves decorating campaign, teaches CPR at the Lodge, and helps out as a paramedic for the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation. Thomas hopes to build a home here after he retires from the Thousand Oaks fire department and, perhaps, help out at the Bigfork Volunteer Fire Department. “Depending on how I do physically, in five years, maybe I’ll be an asset to them,” he said.

Working on the monument has helped Thomas see the larger picture in life. “Whatever problems I have in my day; it takes me out of my world and gives me a new perspective,” he said. “I want this

this to be a success not for me, but for the families.”