A Knack for Watching Over Others

By MICHAEL DUFFY, Brian Bennett, Mark Kukis

GENEVIE, AARON

Age 22. Private first class, U.S. Army. 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division

IED blast, Baghdad

As a gunner in a scout unit, Aaron Genevie often rode through Baghdad popped up out of the top of his humvee, manning a belt-fed automatic machine gun. Gunners are the eyes and ears of the driver, constantly scanning the horizon for threats. In Baghdad's congested streets, they are also traffic cops--waving cars out of the way, shouting at drivers who get too close. That's what Genevie was doing the day he died, telling his driver to maneuver around an Iraqi national-police checkpoint when a roadside bomb went off and killed him instantly.

A scout in the 1st Infantry Division of Fort Riley, Kans., Genevie had to fight to get into the Army. Military doctors told him he couldn't enlist with his history of asthma and shoulder problems. But Genevie knew he could handle the training. He videotaped himself doing rigorous 20-minute workouts to show that he wouldn't slow down his unit. He even drafted a letter to President Bush asking him to intervene. Genevie never sent it because the Army eventually let him in. His mother Patricia found the letter among his things a few days after he died.

Like many other parents of service members, she had tried her best to persuade him not to join. "You don't want to go over there," she remembers telling him. Genevie idolized his mother. He listed her as his "biggest inspiration" in his 2003 senior yearbook. But joining the military was one thing he had to do on his own, with or without his mother's blessing. Before he left for basic training, Patricia remembers telling him, "I support you 100%."

His mother has tried to make sense of Genevie's death by holding tight to the notion that he was watching over his fellow soldiers in his last moments. It was a familiar role. "He was real big on Superman," she says. Genevie tattooed a red and gold S on his chest. When his parents separated a few years ago, Genevie stayed with his mom and "took over the fatherly role," she remembers, helping them work through their problems and get back together. That's why, when he died, she wanted him to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. "That's where heroes go," she says. "He was my hero."