The donation being presented in a ceremony Friday at the Moritz College of Law in Columbus comes from a student who wants to honor her husband, who was killed in action in Iraq.

Army Capt. Jenna Grassbaugh is making the donation to create the Capt. Jonathan D. Grassbaugh Veterans Project. It will provide legal assistance to veterans on issues such as foreclosure and debt.

Jenna Grassbaugh is a student at the law school.

Her husband was killed by a roadside bomb on April 7, 2007. She later served a tour in Iraq.

The law school is trying to raise money to match Grassbaugh’s donation.

The thing about disasters is they “come with little warning, they come with very destructive power…” says Darrell Koerber, deputy director of Franklin County Emergency Management and Homeland Security.

Since 2010, the agency has trained 250 volunteers to quickly respond to major floods, tornadoes, derechos, dam failures on the Scioto or Olentangy, or a game-day attack on Ohio Stadium. Koerber is especially interested in volunteers who are also veterans.

We know that they’ve worked within a team before, we know that they’ve been responsible for other people before, for equipment before.

As Franklin County begins a new nine-week disaster training course. Twelve of the 25 enrolled are military veterans. Chaplain Mikel Ryuho Monnett served in the U-S Army in Germany prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He says disaster preparedness training dovetails with his military experience.

“We veterans buy into it more because we’re used to the discipline of the structure and everything and we’re used to drilling and preparing for something that might come,” Monnett says.

Whereas the ordinary citizen, if they say ‘Well it might come, but why should I prepare if it just might come?’

As a chaplain, Monnett has seen the invisible scars of disasters. He volunteered with the Red Cross after the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina.

The Franklin County curriculum includes a course on disaster psychology.

Another veteran, Angelo Nocera, is also among the class of 25. He says disaster victims can also count on a veteran for leadership.

“You figure (with) a veteran beside a citizen that has not been in the military, there’s more structure, you’ve gone through formal training of first aid, and people look to that leadership”

Koerber says so far its mostly older vets who have volunteered for the response teams. He’d like to recruit some younger veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.

“Don’t look at it as a bad thing that they’re not here because we have some great experience levels in the classroom now.

“I think within time though once they get settled in we’ll start to see of those type veterans here.”

More than 75,000 military veterans live in Franklin County. Koerber says he’d like to train 80 to 100 more this year in disaster preparedness.

The department says 25-year-old Staff Sgt. Wesley Williams of New Carlisle, Ohio, was killed Monday in Kandahar province when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.

The News Tribune reports Williams served with Lewis-McChord’s 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, which deployed last month to replace another Stryker unit in southern Afghanistan.

Williams joined the Army in 2005. He reported to the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Vilseck, Germany, in 2006 and deployed with the unit to Iraq in 2007 as a radio telephone operator.

The Army assigned him to Lewis-McChord’s 4th Brigade in February 2009, and he deployed to Iraq later that year as a rifleman.

The newspaper says he was an infantry squad leader in this Afghan deployment.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is now accused of gunning down 16 civilians in a pre-dawn raid on two Afghan villages in March.

Bales attorney Emma Scanlan says she received the new charges Friday and there’s nothing surprising in them.

There had been talk for some time that the number of victims in the massacre had been over-counted by one.

The Norwood, Ohio, native now faces 16 counts of premeditated murder; six of attempted murder; seven of assault; one of possessing steroids; one of using steroids; one of destroying a laptop computer; one of burning bodies; and one of using alcohol.

Major General Deborah Ashenhurst described Captain Nicolas Rozanski, Sergeant First Class Shawn Hannon and Sergeant First Class Jeffrey Rieck as heroes.

General Ashenhurst was in Afghanistan when she learned about the deaths of the three service members who were killed by what is presumed to be an I-E-D. She said she accompanied the bodies back to Dover Air Force base where they arrived on Saturday. Meanwhile, Ashenhurst says, their fellow guardsmen in Afghanistan are overcoming their grief.

“It was amazing the depth of personal interaction that had come from these three men. It just seems like everybody they had served with, worked with or knew of these three gentlemen and it was a very deep cut into our forces emotionally.”

Ashenhurst says it not clear when the remains of the three guardsmen will be returned to the Columbus area.

As soon as the folks in Dover are finished preparing the remains, and they are ready to ship back to the families, we will bring them all home at the same time. We will receive them in an appropriate manner. And then they will be released to their families and the families will definitely be in charge of where they go at that point.

Three other Ohio guardsmen were wounded in the attack.

The remains of Captain Nicholas Rozanski of Dublin and Sergeant 1st Class Jeffrey Rieck of Columbus arrived Saturday at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base. The attack also killed Sergeant 1st Class Shawn Hannon of Grove City.

The Wednesday attack killed 44-year-old Sgt. 1st Class Shawn Hannon of Grove City, 45-year-old Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey Rieck of Columbus and 36-year-old Capt. Nicholas Rozanski of Dublin. Four others were wounded.

Their battalion commander, Lt. Col. Craig Baker of Pickerington, talked with the Dayton Daily News by telephone from Afghanistan. He wouldn’t comment on the attack but said Ohio should be proud of the three soldiers.

A spokesman tells The Columbus Dispatch that Ohio National Guard’s commanding officer was visiting troops in Afghanistan when the attack occurred and was expected to escort the soldiers’ remains back to the United States.

The Department of Defense says Army Staff Sgt. Christopher L. Brown was killed in Kunar province on Tuesday.

The 26-year-old Brown graduated from Hamilton Township High School. He was assigned to a battalion at Ft. Carson, Colorado.

Member of the 1486th Transportation Company held a call to duty ceremony this morning.

The troops were scheduled to depart immediately after the ceremony…they’re going to Afghanistan to help with supply distribution and resource support.