Date set for ceremony for Crystal Lake Post Office renamed for fallen soldier

Cpl. Ryan J. Cummings was killed in action June 3, 2006, in Iraq, when the gunship he was riding in hit a roadside bomb and flipped.

He was in the gun turret when it happened, said his father, John Cummings.

Now, 17 years and one day later, a ceremony is set at the Crystal Lake Post Office, recognizing its renaming as the Ryan J. Cummings Post Office.

John Cummings, now of McHenry, has been working toward this day since March 2020.

He would be just thrilled and so grateful that everyone came. He was all about the Marine Corps and serving his county. I feel he will be there that day.”

—  Ryan J Cummings' father John Cummings

“I knew I wasn’t going to quit,” Cummings said, even while knowing how much red tape he’d have to wade through to make the renaming a reality.

The program is set for 11 a.m. June 4 at the Post Office, 301 Congress Parkway in Crystal Lake. There will be speakers, a band, singers and a 21-gun salute in Ryan’s honor, Cummings said.

If Ryan could be there, “he would be just thrilled and so grateful that everyone came. He was all about the Marine Corps and serving his country. I feel he will be there that day. I really do,” Cummings said.

Ryan was 17 years old and attending high school in Hoffman Estates when he enlisted. They were talking about college when he told his dad and mother, Janis Cummings, that he wanted to go into the Marines, but needed a parent to sign permission to enlist before age 18.

“He said, ‘I want to go into the Marines.’ I tried to talk him into the Air Force or the Navy,” Cummings said. But Ryan convinced him to come with to the recruiting station, and his father signed. He was sworn in immediately.

The day was Sept. 10, 2001, the day before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

Trying to undo what he had signed the day before “was the first thing I thought of, but it was too late. He was already sworn,” Cummings said.

It was during his third reenlistment, five years after he entered the Marines, that Ryan was killed.

The family was living in Crystal Lake at the time. The post office program to rename facilities uses where the family lived at the time of the death, Cummings said.

According to the U.S. Postal Service, Congress passed the first law in 1967 dedicating a postal facility in honor of an individual and “a dedicatory plaque is displayed in a prominent, secure area in the Post Office lobby.”

Identical measures in the House and Senate were introduced in March 2022 to rename the post office, with U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, D-Downers Grove, sponsoring the bills. President Joe Biden signed the legislation in December.