Stryker Brigade News

Since Lucas' death, Kelly has slowly begun making a new life. She bought a house in Tonganoxie, something she said she and Lucas planned on doing someday. She works at a local bank. She keeps in touch with some of Lucas' friends still serving in Iraq. She keeps his dogtags hanging in her car.

It's hard to find something in the small town of Tonganoxie that doesn't remind Kelly of Lucas--the high school football field where Lucas was a star linebacker and his jersey, No. 69, was retired. The Veterans of Foreign Wars park where the couple had wedding pictures taken. The couple planned to renew their wedding vows at the park when Lucas returned, but it's where memorial services were held after he died. The grocery story where the couple worked together when Lucas first asked Kelly out. The Taco John's where they had their first date.

"There are reminders everywhere," she said.

She draws attention in the small town as the widow of a Kansas-born soldier.

"Honestly, the hardest part has been trying to blend in again," she said. "I'm at the point where I just want to blend in again and I want to be able to start my life over again."

April Hess is also struggling. While Lucas was the first casualty from the Stryker brigade, April's husband, Kenny, is one of the most recent. He died April 11 in a suicide bomber attack in Rawah that left two other soldiers seriously injured.

April left Fairbanks after Kenny's death and is staying with her parents in Kentucky. She said by phone last week that she's trying to find a place of her own, but isn't ready yet to think about finding a job. She doesn't have any plans for Memorial Day and bristles, she said, when people call it a "holiday."

"I don't even want to celebrate anything like that right now," she said.

Rather than reflect on Kenny's death, she said she wanted to remember his life. Her voice and slight Southern accents lifts when she describes how they met at a Louisville bar on Halloween 2001. She was dressed like a cave girl, Kenny wasn't wearing a costume. He wouldn't stop calling her after that, April said. He proposed for two months and they were married in March 2002.

Kenny was keen on history and knew random facts, April said.

"Maybe he wasn't always telling the truth," she said with a small laugh, "but he had an answer for everything."

While April won't be observing Memorial Day in any particular way, she said she thinks it's important for people to think about what deployed service members are going through.