DOB/DOD: October 22, 1976 (New Haven, CT) – October 2, 2009; 32 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Engaged to be married to Beth Segaloff (1973-).
LOCAL ADDRESS: Santa Fe Avenue; Hamden
COMMISSIONED: 2003
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 38A; Civil Affairs Officer
UNIT: Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion, U.S. Army Reserve; Greensboro, North Carolina
FAMILY: Born to Gary (1950-) and Laura S. Mintz Sklaver (1950-). One brother, Samuel (1980-). One sister, Anna “Annie” M. Sklaver Orenstein (1984-).
DECORATIONS: Awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart Medal, Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with device, Global War on Terrorism Medal (Expeditionary), Global War on Terrorism Medal (Service), Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Army Overseas Service Ribbon, NATO ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) Medal – Afghanistan, Combat Action Badge, Parachutist Badge (Basic), and the Civil Affairs Badge.
CIRCUMSTANCES: Captain Sklaver died in Murcheh, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when a suicide bomber attacked him. Also killed in this incident:
Army Private First Class Alan H. Newton, Jr.; Asheboro, NC
Hamden High School Class of 1995
Tufts University Class of 1999, School of Arts and Sciences. Also received a Master of Arts degree in International Relations, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Class of 2003.
From The Associated Press in The Day (New London, CT) on October 6, 2009
By Pat Eaton-Robb
Dad: Soldier wanted to win hearts of Afghans
HARTFORD, Connecticut — Army Captain Benjamin Sklaver was a humanitarian who lived and died trying to fix whatever he found broken in the world, his friends and family said Monday.
The 32-year-old reservist had worked on refugee issues in Africa and started a nonprofit organization that brought clean drinking water to thousands. He was killed Friday in southeastern Afghanistan when his civil affairs unit was ambushed by a suicide attacker.
“Ben was a patriot, loved his country, and loved serving,” said friend Jake Herrle. “But he also saw his job in the Army to be a combatant for peace. He saw the Army as a way to do greater good.”
Sklaver, a Hamden native, was almost finished with his reserve commitment and was engaged to be married when he was recalled to duty this spring and sent to Afghanistan.
His job there was to help the military establish better relationships with the Pashtun people so fewer would join the Taliban, said his father, Gary Sklaver. He would meet with village elders to find out if they needed schools, a hospital, or clean water, and then he would help them get it. Often, he would not know whether the people he was working with were sympathetic to the enemy.
“The people who are there doing good, such as my son, are the biggest threat to the Taliban because if they win over the hearts and minds of the population, then the Taliban doesn’t have the recruiting points they would have if the soldiers just came in, knocked on doors and killed people,” his father said.
Ben Sklaver had a history of winning people’s hearts and minds, Gary Sklaver said.
After graduating with a master’s degree in international relations from Tufts University, he went to work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and traveled to Malawi in Africa to work on international hunger and refugee relief issues.
In 2006, his reserve unit was sent to the Horn of Africa. He ended up in northern Uganda, where his mission was to help refugees re-establish communities after 20 years of civil war. Most of his work involved finding new sources of clean water, helping dig wells, or creating protected springs, his father said.
He was so moved by the suffering he saw that he founded the nonprofit Clearwater Initiative when he got home, recruiting friends to help him continue the work in Uganda.
“It was totally volunteer. He had a full-time job with the CDC and spent about 30 hours a week of his own time working on this,” his father said.
The organization allows donors to contribute to specific projects, such as repairing a well at a school. They can then follow online as the project they funded is completed.
Since it began, the Clearwater Initiative has provided access to clean water for more than 6,500 people, said Herrle, who volunteers and serves on the charity’s board. Sklaver’s goal was to increase that to 250,000 within 10 years.
“He was a tremendously bright and caring person,” Herrle said. “He could have very easily just coasted along on his talent, looking out for himself. But because of the way he saw the world and saw his place in it, he always tried to improve it.”
Sklaver had just begun a job in New York with the Federal Emergency Management Agency when he was called back to active duty in the spring.
At the time of his death, his friends were preparing a giant care package to send to him for Thanksgiving. Everyone who donated to the package also made a donation to his nonprofit.
His family is requesting that mourners contribute to the charity instead of sending flowers.
Sklaver’s funeral is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell has ordered state flags to remain at half-staff until Sklaver has been interred.
From the Jewish Journal on May 26, 2022
By Rich Tenorio and Linda Matchan
WE DON’T WANT THEIR NAMES TO BE FORGOTTEN:
Jewish War Veterans To Be Remembered On Memorial Day
Newtown attorney Harvey Weiner is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a former national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA. While stationed in South Vietnam’s Mekong Delta in 1969, he experienced everything from night ambushes and rocket attacks to small raids and sniper fire. He was involved in a roadside bombing when a land mine blew up a jeep driving just ahead of his own vehicle.
So, every year around this time, Weiner undertakes a self-imposed special mission. He urges rabbis to honor the memory of every Jewish service member who has died in combat since Sept. 11, 2001 – the date of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington – asking them to recite their names on the Shabbat before Memorial Day.
He said he was once told about a Jewish teaching that human beings die twice: Once when the body dies and once when their names are no longer mentioned. Though he doesn’t know the source, the idea resonates with him deeply.
“We don’t want their names to be forgotten,” he said.
As of this year, the number of known Jewish service members who have died in combat since 2001 stands at 58: two women and 56 men. They range in age from 19 to 43 and represent 27 states. Their hometowns are urban, suburban, and rural.
They served in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn) and in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Freedom’s Sentinel). “They seem to be Jews from all walks of life,” Weiner said. “All ranks, from private to major, all the different branches of the service.”
One of these servicemen had a Massachusetts connection. Army Captain Ben Sklaver was 32 in 2009 when he was killed in Muscheh, Afghanistan, by a suicide bomber waiting silently behind a building as Sklaver rounded the corner.
Sklaver, from Hamden, Connecticut, attended Tufts University in Medford, where he earned an undergraduate degree in international relations and a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, focusing on security studies and humanitarian assistance. While attending Tufts, he enrolled in ROTC.
“He was very much a humanitarian who just wanted to help people and make the world a better place,” said his younger sister, Annie Sklaver Orenstein, who is writing a book based on her brother’s life and diaries. “Always a Sibling” is expected to be released in late 2023 or early 2024.
“He felt the military had the infrastructure and resources available to it to access communities in need – more access than an NGO [non-governmental organization] would have,” she said.
In an earlier deployment, Sklaver had served in northern Uganda, which opened his eyes to the problems endemic in regions beset by violence and civil unrest. He developed a passion for bringing clean water supplies to such areas.
“He was interested in boosting infrastructure and local resources,” said Orenstein. “He was really moved and impacted by the effect that building a well could have in a community that didn’t have safe drinking water and where kids couldn’t go to school because they had to go get water.”
When he was 30, Sklaver founded the ClearWater Initiative, a nonprofit working to supply clean drinking water to rural Ugandans.
After her brother died, she read his journals and wrote about them in a 2020 essay for Time magazine. In one entry, Sklaver referenced the anonymity of men and women in the military:
2/6/98 Geneva, Switzerland
Went to the Red Cross Museum today and got a needed reminder of the faces behind the war. Not the numbers we talk about, but the faces … [It] made me wonder: Why don’t people learn war kills? Can this be changed? Is war human nature? No. Human nature is a desire for security, food, and shelter. So, does a solution exist? Help. Seems like the only choice for now. Just go in and help.
“The military was how he died, not how he lived,” Orenstein said. “I think there is this narrative that people just join the military to get the bad guys. I think he was so far from that. For him, it wasn’t about the bad guys. It was about people who didn’t have the resources.”
The Jewish War Veterans organization is participating in several commemorative events across the state for Memorial Day.
U.S. Representative Jake Auchincloss of Newton, a Jewish Marine Corps veteran who served in Afghanistan and Panama, described JWV as a very important organization, one of a constellation of Jewish civic organizations “that make American Jewish life so vibrant.”
In Eastern Massachusetts, JWV members will plant flags at cemeteries, including on the North Shore. The planting of flags to remember veterans is a major undertaking and a challenging one.
Korea veteran Alan Lehman, commander of the JWV North Shore Post 220 in Peabody, was looking to have over 1,000 graves of Jewish veterans flagged at cemeteries in Lynn, Danvers, and Peabody by Memorial Day.
His wife Donna Lehman, herself an Iraq War veteran, said flagging is hard work for those who help out, many of whom are elderly. Sometimes, they have to plant flags in the rain.
“We need new members,” she said. “It’s hard to get people to join.”
The North Shore post will join its fellow members of the Peabody Veterans Council for a Memorial Day service at Cedar Grove Cemetery on Sunday, May 29, at 9:30 a.m. The post will then march in Peabody’s Memorial Day parade.
Barry Lischinsky, the JWV national chief of staff who is affiliated with North Shore Post 220, was focusing on Pride of Lynn Cemetery in Lynn, where he expected American flags would be planted at the gravesites of 261 Jewish veterans.
The second annual memorial service at Pride of Lynn will take place on Sunday, May 29, at 10 a.m.
Lehman said anyone who has a relative who was a veteran and whose grave is not marked with a flag should contact the cemetery. “Every veteran,” he said, “deserves a flag.”
The Legacy of the ClearWater Initiative
On January 1, 2016, ClearWater Initiative (CWI) formally merged with the International Lifeline Fund. As a result, these two separate organizations became a single legal entity under the Lifeline name. ClearWater was founded in 2007 by the late Benjamin Sklaver, a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a U.S. Army captain assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division’s civil affairs unit. Serving a two-year tour in Uganda that began in 2006, Ben watched sorrowfully as young children drank filthy water from stagnant pools and learned of the horrifying health consequences: over 20,000 kids were dying each year from preventable water-borne diseases. Determined to do something to prevent this needless tragedy, Ben returned to his home in New Haven, spread the word of what he had seen, mobilized friends and family, raised funds, and established CWI to provide clean water infrastructure to remote villagers in Northern Uganda’s war-torn Gulu district. As a result of his efforts, more than 13,000 people across the region gained access to fresh drinking water, and Ben earned the affectionate moniker of “Moses Ben.” Following the conclusion of his tour in Uganda, Ben was hired by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to conduct disaster planning for the New York tri-state area. Two years later, in 2009, he was redeployed to Afghanistan, where he was killed by a suicide bomber while on patrol near the Afghan border. Ben was survived by his fiancé, Beth Segaloff, with whom he was to be wed that summer, and his parents, Gary and Laura Sklaver. But while Ben is no longer with us, through the merger between Lifeline and CWI, his legacy of ensuring access to clean water to Uganda’s rural poor lives on to this day. With the merger of the two organizations, Lifeline embedded the core elements of ClearWater’s approach – namely, direct community engagement, coordination with local government, and reliance on indigent talent – into its own. As a direct result, our two organizations have been able to achieve far more together than we could have possibly achieved separately and, hence, are doing more to honor Ben’s profound legacy than ever before.
A testimonial from Beth Segaloff, Ben Sklaver’s fiancée.
I met Ben in July 2008 and immediately knew he was who I had been waiting for. He was an extraordinary man. He was strong and compassionate, kind and brilliant, thoughtful and loyal- his presence made me feel safe.
Six weeks into our relationship, Ben said to me, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we’re getting married next summer on the beach. The bad news is that I’m deploying.”
He deployed in July 2009 and was killed on October 2, 2009. The pain was unbearable.
It’s been 15 years. There is no timeline in grief. So, while I am not in mourning, grief can be present because love is always there.
Our time together was far too brief. I grieve Ben’s death, and I grieve the life we had planned. And yet—I hold deep meaning from the time we shared. That time was FULL. The greatest gift was that we experienced true love.
While we did not get to share our life together as planned, I continue to carry the lessons and wisdom from Ben—lessons from our relationship and even from my grief. There are qualities of Ben’s that I strive to embody in my own life: leadership, pursuing peace, and tikkun olam (Hebrew for “repairing the world”).
I feel confident in saying that if you knew Ben, he had a lasting effect on you. It’s my hope that Ben’s legacy lives on through others striving for goodness in the world and living authentic lives.
Soon after Ben died, someone asked me about his legacy. Fifteen years later, I feel the best way I can honor Ben’s legacy is to live my life with more love, more joy, more laughter, and more peace. I try to do this every day with my relationships, with my community, and with my work.
A eulogy written and posted to TogetherWeServed.com by Captain Thoreen of Blackwatch 6.
“Ben Sklaver was my friend. I didn’t know him long, but I had come to know him as well as a man could in the time we spent together from the Arghandab Valley during Opportunity Hold to the back roads of Maywand. His enduring smile, friendly insistence in having everyone call him “Ben”- just Ben, and his desire to make a difference in the world are just a few of the things that defined him in Blackwatch. He saw hope here in Afghanistan when so many others did not. He loved to say we were going to bring “goodness and light” to Maywand- not in the naïve sense, but with a smirk and a laugh, fully knowing the obstacles, pitfalls, and frustrations we’d face. Yet, he was bound and determined that one way or another, we would make a positive difference here.
Ben dedicated his life to helping others, both in and out of the Army. In Uganda, they called him “Moses Ben” for the work he did there with CA, and then went on to found Clearwater, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing clean water to rural villages in Uganda. In the private sector, he worked for the CDC and then FEMA, doing humanitarian relief at home and abroad. Here, he was going to do all he could to leave this district a better place.
The night before Ben was killed, we sat out behind his room smoking cigars and talking, avoiding work and simply sharing our ideas about the future. It was our way to get away. I got to know his fiancée, Beth, and stepson and heard about his travels through Israel, Europe, the Horn of Africa, and his relief work right at home during Hurricane Katrina. He had done an amazing amount in his 32 years and was one of the most generous, caring, and genuinely selfless people I’ve met. It is tragically ironic that the very people he was trying to help took him from us.
If our lives are judged on how we’ve touched the lives of others and made a difference in the world around us, there are few that can match Ben. He was an intellectual, humble, and dedicated humanitarian who improved the lives of thousands and will surely continue to touch the lives of thousands more for years to come. Ben will live on in our memories, showing all of us what a man can do and the difference he can make, proving that he can bring goodness and light to even the darkest places.”
Captain Sklaver is buried in Farband Jewish Cemetery, 157 East Street, Morris, Connecticut; Section 3, Row I, Plot 385.
