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Family Mourns Soldier Lost In Iraq War

Sep-30-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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By MONICA SCANDLEN

NEW PORT RICHEY - Pvt. Adam Harris knew the dangers of serving in Iraq. He told his father he was afraid. He wore his mother's cross to keep him safe.
But Harris died Sept. 22 on a mission in Mosul, shot in the head by a sniper, his family said. He had turned 21 four days earlier.

``It's something I'll never get over. Ever,'' his mother, Denise Michaud Bush, said Wednesday as she prepared for her son's funeral at Trinity Memorial Gardens in west Pasco County. ``I keep thinking someone's going to tell me it's a mistake. But it's real.'' [...]

The day Harris died, he was gunner on a Stryker armored vehicle. No one else was hurt, and his mother said she likes to think her son died instantly.

``As the gunner, it's his job ... to protect everyone on the Stryker,'' she said. ``He died doing his job.''

Harris will be buried with full military honors and awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, his family said.

Denise Bush has family in this area, and Harris' grandmother and great-grandparents are buried at Trinity Memorial Gardens Cemetery.

Before Harris left for Iraq, Denise Bush gave him a cross her husband had given her before they married. She told her son: ``You keep this on. You keep praying. You keep God in your heart.''

Now, along with Harris' dog tags, she wears the cross again.


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