DiGiovanni Wins Trimble Award

Kalaheo senior Storme DiGiovanni

Kalaheo High School senior Storme DiGiovanni may find it challenging to stay on task for graduation in May, as she seems to be flying all over the place on behalf of the Young Marines. But recent honors indicate she’s up for it.

DiGiovanni, 18, attended the black-tie Veterans Conference in Washington, D.C., last October to accept the Jimmie Trimble Scholarship Award and will fly to Guam and Iwo Jima March 7 for the annual Reunion of Honor trip related to her award. DiGiovanni and Gianni Mattucci of Baltimore are the 2013 winners of the award for those who “exemplify Trimble’s fine qualities and fighting spirit.”

Trimble died a hero at the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. He enlisted as a private in the Third Marine Division and was sent to Guam following its liberation. An outstanding player on the division’s all-star baseball team, he then signed up for the Iwo Jima campaign and was killed by a suicide bomber who jumped into his fox-hole. His division’s home field on Guam was renamed Trimble field soon after his death.

DiGiovanni, meanwhile, joined the Young Marines in 2006 on Okinawa, completing its boot camp there. By 2008 she was a staff sergeant in the group, a national nonprofit for ages 8 to 18 that promotes leadership, service and self-discipline.

During her family’s military transfers, she joined a YM unit in Maryland, completed its leadership school in North Carolina, moved to Hawaii last summer – and helped open a new YM unit, the Pyramid Rock Young Marines.

Now a sergeant major, she earned the unit’s highest honor, the Distinguished Order of Merit, in December.

By the way, she and her fellow YM members seek more recruits, military or civilian. Email pyramidrockYM@gmail.com or call 443-975-6805.