Aaron Weaver, a Citrus High graduate, survived cancer, botched surgery and a battle in Somalia before a helicopter crash in Iraq killed him.
By JUSTIN GEORGE and STEVE THOMPSON
Published January 10, 2004
[Family photo]
Aaron Weaver, a chief warrant officer serving in Iraq, stands in front of a defaced image of Saddam Hussein. Weaver e-mailed the photo to his aunt, Kristy Patterson, just days before he was killed when a rocket hit his helicopter in Iraq.
[Family photo]
Aaron Weaver holds daughter Savannah in a family photo. He also leaves behind his wife, Nancy, and a stepson, Austin.
[Family photo]
Aaron Weaver poses for a family portrait with his wife, Nancy, his stepson, Austin, 10, and his daughter, Savannah, 1.
[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer]
Aaron Weaver's mother, Kelly Weaver, 55, left, his sister Shannon Felicetta, 28, center, and cousin Bridgit Patterson, 13, talk about him Friday.
[Times photo:
Brendan Fitterer]
Michael Weaver said of his son Aaron: "I was very relieved having him survive (Somalia) and having him survive cancer and then -- this."
INVERNESS - A bloody battle in Somalia, memorialized in the book and movie Black Hawk Down, couldn't kill Aaron Weaver.
Neither could testicular cancer.
Nor could a botched abdominal surgery and months in a hospital.
But Thursday, while Weaver was en route to a medical exam to ensure that his cancer hadn't returned, a rocket shot down the medevac helicopter carrying Weaver. He and eight other soldiers died near Fallujah, Iraq.
"He's made it through everything else," his sister, Shannon Felicetta of Tarpon Springs, said Friday. "Why couldn't he have made it through this?"
The death sent Weaver's father on a mission to get his other two sons out of combat. Steve, 39, a Hawaii-based Army helicopter pilot, is scheduled to head to Afghanistan. Ryan, 30, a Black Hawk pilot, is already stationed at Baghdad International Airport, 60 miles from the site of the crash that killed his brother.
Aaron Weaver, a chief warrant officer who flew Kiowa helicopters with the 82nd Airborne Division, completed cancer treatments last year and persuaded military doctors and Army brass to send him to Iraq.
He still needed bimonthly blood tests for his cancer screening and was supposed to get them in Fort Bragg, N.C., where Weaver was based.
He made the Army give them to him in Iraq.
He was being flown to one of those checkups at the U.S. base at Baghdad International Airport on Thursday when the Black Hawk crashed, killing the former Inverness resident, who had earned a Bronze Star for his role in Somalia. An Iraqi witness said the helicopter was hit by a rocket, but the military said the cause of the crash was not known.
A life spent dodging tragedy made his death more difficult for his parents, Michael Weaver of Inverness and Kelly Weaver of Clearwater.
His father, raised by a World War II veteran and toughened by his own stint in the Marine Corps, knew the reality of war.
But he said his son seemed indestructible.
"I was very relieved having him survive (Somalia) and having him survive cancer and then - this," Michael Weaver, 59, said Friday.
Aaron Weaver also is survived by his wife, Nancy, daughter Savannah, 1, and stepson Austin, 10, who live at Fort Bragg; and five sisters, including one who serves in the Air Force and has not been deployed.
Born in Clearwater, Aaron Weaver moved to Floral City as a child, running around the Withlacoochee State Forest, searching the woods for fossils and arrowheads with his siblings, his father said.
He attended Citrus High School in Inverness, where he was an excellent student who joined the track, cross-country and soccer teams, earning all-county honors in cross-country.
With an endearing personality, handsome smile and loads of charm, Weaver impressed everyone he met and usually stayed out of trouble, said Citrus High School teacher and coach Bruce Nelson.
He looked up to his brother Steve, who was seven years older, and followed him into the military after high school. When Steve became a U.S. Army Ranger, Aaron became one, too.
Sent to Somalia, Aaron Weaver was part of a Ranger strike team Oct. 3, 1993, whose mission was to capture two of a Somali warlord's lieutenants. But a rocket-propelled grenade shot down a Black Hawk helicopter, and the mission went awry. Soon after, another helicopter was shot down.
Weaver was in command of a Humvee that attempted to reach one of the downed Black Hawk sites in the capital city of Mogadishu.
"We were receiving fire from three directions. ... As I moved up (to take a shot) a grenade bounced into the intersection from the right," Weaver wrote in letters he sent home. "Luckily, no one was injured."
Later, the vehicle was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, injuring other passengers but leaving Weaver with only a few cuts, his father said.
By the end of the battle, 18 U.S. soldiers were dead and more than 80 wounded. More than 300 Somalis are estimated to have been killed in battle.
Mark Bowden, then a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote a vivid account of the battle that became a best-selling book and later a movie. Weaver is mentioned near the back of the book, fetching coffee for a wounded soldier.
The grateful man replied, "Bless you, my son. Got any cigarettes?"
Bowden said Friday that he never spoke to Weaver, but was amazed at Weaver's resiliency and willingness to return to battle after Somalia.
"That has to be an experience of sheer terror," Bowden said. "To continue functioning at some level, let alone to have the intestinal fortitude to go back out there is just extraordinary, especially when it would have been easier for him to have not to."
In 1994, Weaver was awarded the Bronze Star with valor for "extreme courage."
Shortly after, he left the military and returned to Citrus County, where he attended community college.
Soon, he was back to following his older brother, Steve, who had left the Army Rangers to become a helicopter pilot. So Aaron Weaver re-enlisted to become a pilot, followed to flight school by his younger brother, Ryan.
Last year, while he was at Fort Bragg, cancer socked Aaron Weaver, forcing him to have both testicles removed - one as a precaution.
While doctors later opened up his abdomen to make sure his cancer hadn't spread, Mike Weaver said, doctors botched the surgery and Aaron Weaver was hospitalized for four months.
Another abdominal surgery and Aaron Weaver was back in the hospital for two more months, his father said. His 5-foot-9, 180-pound frame had shriveled.
But he fought back, and months later, with his cancer in remission, persuaded his doctors to give him a physical waiver that allowed him to go to Iraq and get his bimonthly checkups there.
The pilot was scheduled to come home in a month when the medevac carrying him to one of those exams crashed. His brother Ryan, also in Iraq, was to see Aaron the next day.
His father remembers a last phone call, in which Aaron told him to send books, not food, because mice were eating all the food and there was plenty for soldiers.
His father planned to send a couple of novels and astrology books. He remembers one thing about the call, he said: "That it was the last one."
* * *
The military released the names of seven of the eight other Army soldiers killed in Thursday's helicopter crash near Fallujah: Staff Sgt. Craig Davis, 37, of Opelousas, La.; Spc. Michael A. Diraimondo, 22, of Simi Valley, Calif.; Spc. Christopher A. Golby, 26, of Johnstown, Pa.; Sgt. 1st Class Gregory B. Hicks, 35, of Duff, Tenn.; Spc. Nathaniel H. Johnson, 22, of Augusta, Ga.; Army Chief Warrant Officer Philip A. Johnson Jr., 31, of Alabama; and Army Chief Warrant Officer Ian D. Manuel, 23, of Florida.
- Times staff writers Colleen Jenkins and researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Justin George can be reached at 352 860-7309 or jgeorge@sptimes.com
