Brock Babb killed in combat

Sgt. Brock Babb, a 40-year-old Evansville Marine killed Sunday in Iraq, felt he had unfinished business in that country.

At 19, he'd joined the Marine Reserves and served in Iraq during the first Iraq war. Two years ago, as the second Iraq war had passed the 18-month mark, he decided to return.

It was totally in character for the sheet-metal worker, volunteer coach and father of three.

"He just didn't do anything halfway at all," his mother, Susie Babb, said Monday.

At fundraisers for junior football or wrestling, "he was the first one there and the last one to leave," said friend and co-worker Tim Maxey.

In 2004, more than a year into the war in Iraq, Babb decided it was time to return.

He wanted to "help young Marines survive," his mother said.

"I said, 'Son, you're breaking my heart, but I am so darn proud of you.'"

Neither his friends nor his family could talk him out of it.

"We tried to talk him out of it, but it was something he felt he wanted to do. I told him he served his time already. He's already been over there once. That was enough," Maxey said. "He loved his country too much. He was committed to everything he did."

It was, he told his father, Terry, "his calling, his duty and his honor ... to go to Iraq."

Babb was killed by a roadside bomb in Anbar Province, a stronghold of Sunni insurgents. One other Marine from Kilo Company of Terre Haute, Ind., also died.

They'd been in Iraq two weeks, though the reservists had been training in California since May.

"Sergeant Babb was one of our senior Marines over there; an excellent Marine," said Marine Reserves spokesman Staff Sgt. Tim Kosky.

The news came to his parents as it has for 2,771 others: Soldiers

in dress uniform on the doorstep.

"Brock is in heaven now," she remembered thinking.

On Monday, she'd been looking at a picture sent from Bangor, Maine, of his unit just before it flew to Iraq.

"He looks really happy in this picture. I know he's just as happy now."

Babb was the oldest of three children.

"He was the sweetest, kindest child you could ever imagine," Susie Babb said. "Then he went into the Marine Corps."

It changed him, she said. He was sterner and more of a leader.

"He taught me to get out of my comfort zone," she said, noting about a year ago she began doing bookkeeping for the AIDS Resource Group.

Babb's own three children were the center of his life. He coached their sports, talked about their accomplishments to his friends and always put his own wants behind theirs.

Tanner, 16, wrestles and plays football for Reitz High School.

His grandmother says he's the spitting image of his father in a football uniform. Zoie, 13, a soccer player, is a seventh-grader at Helfrich Park Middle School. Levi, 8, just starting to get into soccer, is a second-grader at St. Agnes.

"Tanner turned one when (his father) was in Desert Storm," Susie Babb said.

"I was just going through pictures of Tanner when he was real little."

She was also talking Monday with his widow, Barbara, about how the couple met.

Barbara Babb saw Brock Babb across the room at a party when she was 16 and he was 17.

She told a friend, "See that guy over there? I'm going to marry him some day."

A boyhood friend, Mark Hauschild, was in their wedding.

When he heard about Babb's death, "I was just devastated," Hauschild said.

"You just don't think something like that can happen. It ain't fair. It ain't right. I'm missing him a whole lot."

Susie Babb said her daughter-in-law is devastated, but added: "She's a really strong girl. As long as she'll take our help, we'll get through this together."

The loss ripples out beyond immediate family and friends, to the friends of his children. When word got out, about 100 teenagers and adults gathered near his home, said Jon Houchins.

Houchins' son has been best friends with Tanner since they began wrestling at Tekoppel School.

"He was a solid, solid guy. It's going to be an unbelievable blow to the whole West Side, really," Houchins said.

Maxey said Levi is his son's best friend.

"Levi and Trevor, they're two peas in a pod." Trevor was told his friend's dad was killed, but at that age, he can't fully grasp that "forever is forever."

Every Friday night during football season, Maxey and Babb would go to Reitz games, where Babb graduated in 1984.

Usually it was just the two of them, though sometimes the kids would come too and "they'd go running around the stands. We had our little spot, we stood up on the rail."

His voice strained with sorrow. "There'll be a hole in my heart that'll probably never be filled."

From the Courier Press