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Soldier is third from area to die in just a week

Army Sgt. Bryan Luckey, 25, of Tampa was killed by a sniper Thursday during a mission with his team in Mosul, Iraq.

By BEN MONTGOMERY
Published July 2, 2006

TAMPA - On Memorial Highway, in a beige townhouse near Independence Parkway, another family was mourning the death of a soldier Saturday.

Army Sgt. Bryan Luckey, 25, died Thursday in Iraq.

He was the third from the Tampa Bay area to die in less than a week. The others are Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Fuerst III, 26, and Army Cpl. Aaron Griner.

"I'm biased, but he was a remarkable young man," said Luckey's father, Patrick, a veteran himself.

Bryan Luckey wanted to be a Baptist preacher. He joined the Army after Sept. 11. He felt it was his duty, Patrick Luckey said.

The two last spoke on Father's Day. Luckey told his son to keep his head down.

"He was my hero," Luckey said. "All those boys are."

Bryan Luckey was killed by a sniper Thursday during a mission with the 172nd Stryker Brigade combat team in Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city.

Saturday afternoon, his family - including brother Matt, a Marine - quietly hung an American flag from the balcony of their townhouse.

Patrick Luckey, a former mail carrier who is now a business manager in the sports department at Jefferson High School, couldn't say much. His grief was too great.

He was not alone in grief Saturday. Above a tiny American Legion cemetery, with its perfect rows of white headstones, a flag flew at half staff for Fuerst, 26 and newly married when he died June 24 in Afghanistan.

Inside American Legion Hall of USS Tampa Post 5, sat William Rizi, a man whose ears have been ringing since Vietnam.

He pointed to a collage on the wall that includes Fuerst, in fatigues on the fields of Afghanistan. "A week ago today," Rizi said. "He was a member here."

Rizi said Fuerst's mother was sitting next to him at a silent auction at the Legion the day news arrived of her son's death. She got a phone call and left in a rush.

Rizi, who wears a gray beard and suffers from diabetes, says he doesn't openly protest or support the war. "What we do is support the troops, plain and simple," he said.

That includes noting when a soldier dies. The tally of bay area soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 is nearing 40.

Even so, Rizi says he has seen a decline in patriotism, fewer people standing for the flag at parades, fewer people singing the anthem at ballgames. July Fourth is all about fireworks and Budweiser, he said. That is difficult to understand for a man who has been in battle.

"The ones who think about it are the parents and the brothers and the sisters of the ones that are over there," he said. "They're the only ones."

"Freedom," Rizi said, "has a flavor the protected never know."

Ben Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com or 661-2443.

[Last modified July 2, 2006, 08:22:53]