ByELIZABETHTOWN — The Bruin Relays at Central Hardin High School give athletes a chance to prepare for the spring season while also having a little fun with unsanctioned events like the “chocolate milk run” in which runners chug glasses of chocolate milk while racing around the track.
This year’s event was notably different. Beneath the usual friendly competition and festivities, a current of grief and emotion flowed, evident in small signs around the track: an American flag at half staff, military green t-shirts worn by attendees, a banner celebrating an “AMERICAN HERO.”
The hero being honored, Army Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, 26, would have been competing not too many years ago. But on this blustery Saturday morning, he is being mourned as one of 13 American military members, two from Kentucky, killed in the war on Iran.
And there, hoisting a microphone, starter pistol by his side, directing the day’s schedule, was his father, Tim Pennington, the Central Hardin track team’s long-time coach.
Benjamin Pennington’s death and his family’s grief were very much on the minds of those who gathered at his old high school Saturday.
Lydia Hood, who coaches track and field at Warren Central High School, remembered talking to Tim Pennington at a Louisville indoor meet on March 4, just three days after an Iranian attack had injured his son at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
“The only thing that I keep thinking in the back of my brain is him telling me at the state meet, ‘I just want to get my boy home,’” Hood recalled. “They wanted to get him stable enough to get him to Germany so he could go get his son and bring him home. But what kills me is, this is not the way he wanted to bring him home.”
Ben Pennington died of his wounds on Sunday, March 8. On Tuesday, his family traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware joining Vice President JD Vance for Benjamin’s dignified transfer, a solemn event honoring U.S. soldiers killed in action.
As Coach Pennington ran up into the press box above the bleachers, Hood gave him a big hug.
“His strength is just amazing,” Hood said, pointing to Tim’s faith as a source of resilience. “His love for this team and the love for everything about it and everything that it stands for is just as strong. He’s just a good man.”
Before the meet, Pennington’s team gathered along the field to honor Benjamin with a moment of silence. One of the athletes said the Pennington family is “navigating a period of profound grief.”
Along the back of the bleachers hung banners featuring photos of Benjamin — one showing a snapshot when he was on Central Hardin High School’s track team, another showing one of his childhood drawings. Ben’s printing below the drawing fills in a sentence: “I love America because I want to fight for my country.”
Tim Pennington was unflappable as he walked around the field and bleachers, interviewing runners and announcing events. He personally picked up the gallons of chocolate milk from Chaney’s Dairy Farm near Bowling Green for the milk run and urged the runners to not puke on the football field.
“This is the 200 meter low hurdles. I’m dedicating this — this is a Jesse Owens event that he did back in his day,” Pennington said over the booming speakers, referencing famed sprinter Jesse Owens’ domination of the event. Owens was almost five meters ahead of his rivals during the 220 meter low hurdles during the Olympic Games in 1935.
The Pennington family lives in the village of Glendale, close to the high school where Ben, an Eagle Scout, graduated in 2017. On Saturday, yellow ribbons and U.S. flags lined the picturesque streets, paying tribute to Benjamin, offering condolences to his family and many friends.
A local company made track meet t-shirts days ahead of the event, featuring on the sleeve Benjamin’s posthumous promotion to staff sergeant.
Benjamin’s death brought up a mix of emotions among the crowd — pride for the armed forces and anxiety for their safety — as the war in Iran continues. The military plays a prominent role in conservative-leaning Hardin County, home to Army installation Fort Knox. More than 10% of adults in the county are veterans, one of the highest shares of all 120 Kentucky counties.
Multiple people at the meet told the Lantern that Benjamin’s death made a distant war much more personal. Rebekah Osman, who was with her daughter, a hurdler for Central Hardin, said the proximity of Fort Knox provides a lot of common ground for the community. Her husband was previously in the Army.
“When something like this happens, I think it’s just kind of natural. Everybody just comes together,” Osman said. “It’s really been quite the experience to see.”
She also said a soldier’s death close to home makes people think more about what’s happening globally.
“I think the biggest challenge is putting the trust in the people that are making the decisions. It’s easy to stand at arm’s length and just say, ‘Yep, they know what they’re doing. This is what it’s supposed to be.’ But then when this happens to somebody so close by, I think everybody has to stop and think about it all a little bit harder.”
Michael Wortmann, an assistant track and field coach for Elizabethtown High School, served in the Army and was deployed to Iraq in the early 2000s, and his son is currently in the Army at Fort Carson in Colorado.
“It’s completely different when you’re a parent. You’re never ready for it,” Wortmann said, mentioning he had met with Tim Pennington in the press box earlier that day. Wortmann said for deployed soldiers, a conflict’s mission matters — but so does the survival of fellow soldiers once a “bullet goes by your head.”
“We all agreed to do this. We all volunteered for this. Now let’s see if we can get back together,” Wortmann said.
He also said people should not politicize a military death, especially since they may not have all the facts during a conflict. “There’s always a need for military action of some kind.”
The Pentagon on Saturday identified another Kentuckian, Tech Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, as among six crew members who died in the crash of a refueling aircraft in Iraq during a combat mission supporting the U.S. war on Iran.
Jason Buckles, a member of the volunteer Glendale Fire Department who had a daughter competing at the meet, helped community members place U.S. flags from a local American Legion and tie yellow ribbons to trees and utility poles lining the main roads through Glendale.
Buckles, who’s lived in Glendale for decades, remembered exactly who Benjamin Pennington was when he saw his photo when the news of his death broke. “I used to see him running up, riding bikes down the road and what not,” Buckles said. “He’s one of us.”
Buckles said although he was part of the group who helped place flags, he “would rather think Sgt. Benjamin Pennington and all the others before him did it.”
“Yes I had helped, with others, physically placing them out. But, it was him, others before him, and those yet to come, that really did the heavy lifting, so to speak,” Buckles said.
After the last race was run and the last chocolate milk gulped, the coach and grieving father had one final announcement.
“Thank you,” he said, “for the time to honor my son.”
Correction: This story previously misspelled the last name of Michael Wortmann.