Larry Gilbert Dahl Memorial Highway
Near Dundee, Oregon
This stretch of road honors a hometown hero who gave everything in a single instant. Larry Gilbert Dahl grew up near here and joined the Army out of Portland. By February of nineteen seventy-one he was a Specialist Four serving with a transportation company in Vietnam, riding shotgun on an armored gun truck nicknamed Brutus that escorted supply convoys near An Khe.
When enemy soldiers ambushed the convoy and an attacker hurled a hand grenade into the truck, Dahl saw it first and threw himself directly onto the grenade. The blast killed him at once, but his body absorbed it, and his sacrifice saved others in the truck. He was twenty-one years old.
For that act of complete disregard for his own safety, he received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. A Navy ship and this highway carry his name so the sacrifice is not forgotten.
