Soldier's remains expected here Wednesday, funeral on Thursday

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July 24, 2009

From Staff Reports

Funeral services for a Dalton native killed in Afghanistan this week will be on Thursday.

Army Spc. Raymundo “Ray” P. Morales, 34, died Tuesday from injuries he received after a vehicle rollover in Methar Lam, Afghanistan. Army officials said the “circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.”

Morales was assigned to the 148th Brigade Support Battalion based in Cedartown. The Army posthumously awarded him the ranking of sergeant.

Mass of Christian burial will be Thursday at 11 a.m. at the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church with Father Paul Williams and the Rev. Daniel Bravo officiating. Morales will be buried at the Colonial Hills Memorial Park Cemetery on Rauschenberg Road with full military honors. The family will receive friends at the Melrose Chapel of Ponders Funeral Home on Wednesday from 6 until 9 p.m. The rosary will be at 8 p.m.

Stoney Ponders of Ponders Funeral Home said Morales’ remains are expected to arrive at the Dalton Municipal Airport on Wednesday between 9 a.m. and noon. On Thursday, the procession will begin at the funeral home at 138 Melrose Drive at 10:30 a.m. and will go to the church. The service is expected to last an hour. After the service, the procession will travel east on the north bypass, north onto Cleveland Highway, west onto Maple Grove Road, then onto Rauschenberg Road.

Morales, a 1992 graduate of Murray County High School, is the seventh soldier or Marine with ties to Whitfield County to be killed since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2003. He is the third soldier or Marine with local connections to die this year.

Army Sgt. Marshall Edgerton was also buried in Colonial Hills Memorial Park Cemetery. Edgerton, a 1995 graduate of Northwest Whitfield High School, was killed on Dec. 10, 2003, a victim of suicide bombers in Ramadi, a town west of Baghdad in Iraq.