Three Utahns and a U.S. Marine from New York were honored Thursday for fighting for freedom "with weapons or ideas."

Neil Holbrook was one of the eight original Navy frogmen in World War II. He once watched a fellow frogman die on the deck of a ship, struggling to tell him something. He constantly asked himself what his friend was trying to say.

"Time has a way of answering questions, and I think I have an answer to that question," he told a full house at the Freedom Awards Gala at Brigham Young University. The answer his friend couldn't express in his dying moments is this: "I'm passing the torch to the future generations," he said. "Please take care of that Constitution that I can't enjoy. ... I don't have the liberty to go home."

Mona Kashani Heern had to flee her home as a child in Iran in the 1980s after her father was killed for following the Baha'i faith. After spending time in a Pakistani prison, the small family made it to Germany then to the United States.

She challenged attendees to aid them, though the language barrier may be difficult.

"The language of love and kindness doesn't need translation," she said.

The Freedom Award is presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated a unique contribution to the cause of the freedoms guaranteed in the United States Constitution and the traditional American values of family, freedom, God and country.

Boyd K. Packer, LDS Church apostle

President Boyd Kenneth Packer spent more than three years in the U.S. military after graduating from high school, despite a bout of undiagnosed polio when he was five years old. He applied to be a pilot and went into the service in May 1943, then spent the next two years in training and preparing for overseas combat duty. In June 1945, as his crew was awaiting deployment to Japan, World War II ended, and the crew was shipped to Japan as part of an occupation force.

Packer returned home to Brigham City in 1946, married his wife, Donna, and went to college, earning a master's degree from Utah State and a doctorate from BYU. He received a calling as assistant to the Twelve Apostles in September 1961, was ordained as an apostle in June 1970, and is now the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, second to President Thomas S. Monson in authority.

Marine Sgt. Merlin German

Sgt. Merlin German of Manhattan, Kan., graduated from high school in 2003 and joined the U.S. Marine Corps. In September 2004 his platoon went with the 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment to provide convoy security in Iraq. His unit helped complete more than 150 successful missions.

German was on top of a Humvee manning the machine gunner's turret on Feb. 21, 2005 as his convoy got close to Ramadi, Iraq. The blast of an improvised explosive device knocked him to the ground; flames soon covered almost all of his body. He was taken to a hospital in Germany where he was given no chance of survival, then flown to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio so his family could say goodbye.

They said much more than goodbye; German decided to get better, and throughout the next three years went through the process of harvesting, growing and applying skin grafts, re-educating muscles and nerves and learning to walk.

German was 22 when he died suddenly on April 11, 2008 after a simple surgery.

Mona Kashani Heern

Mona Kashani Heern, a seventh-grade teacher in West Jordan, was born to a Baha'i family in the middle of Islamic Iran. As an 8-year-old, she was asked to leave school when she told her teacher her religion, and even her underground education was cut short after her father was arrested a short time later. He was later killed in prison, and her mother pawned all of the valuables they had to pay for arrangements to get the family into Pakistan, where they were all thrown in jail as illegal immigrants.

Once the United Nations got the family released with refugee status, Heern and her family went to Germany, where she was able to go back to school. She later moved to the United States, where she graduated from California State University-Northridge and received a master's degree from the University of Phoenix in Salt Lake City.

She is married to an American-born Baha'i, and they both pray for the day other Iranian Baha'is will be able to openly practice their religion.

Neil K. Holbrook

Neil Holbrook of Salt Lake City was one of the first Navy "frogmen" in World War II; he traded in his kitchen duty, one of the few assignments the Navy would give him because he was color-blind, to be part of an underseas demolition team. The team, which was the first of its kind, performed reconnaissance in planned landing and combat areas and then cleared the path for invading ships and troops. The frogmen, so dubbed for their tight rubber suits and long swim fins, were the navy's first commando unit to enter combat in the war during the invasions of the Pacific islands of Saipan and Tinian.

These men, who are now the Navy SEALs, had no specific manuals or guidelines; their training included endurance running, open-ocean swimming, hand-to-hand combat, knife fighting, scouting and small boat operations. Holbrook was one of the original 12; these men completed 26 missions on multiple islands throughout the Pacific. Often these missions kept going amidst bullets and shrapnel.

After the war, Holbrook returned home, got married and earned a law degree. He and his wife, Colleen, had three sons and one daughter. The couple served four missions for the LDS Church.

Source: Freedom Festival Magazine 2009

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