Tony Knier remembered

WELLSBORO -- Tony Knier left his walking stick propped on the porch of his in-laws, John and Sandra Kline, in the tiny village of Draper, just south of the only-slightly-larger village of Stony Fork, south of Wellsboro.

It wasn't much, really, just a slender, slightly curved maple branch with a little gray paint on one end. But Knier found it useful hiking the steep hillsides around Stony Fork Creek and Rattler Mountain, hills he loved to climb chasing wild turkey and whitetail buck.

"He picked it up when he was here last spring," John Kline said. "When he was leaving, he said to just leave it on the porch where it was, that he would use it again when he came back to hunt."

In August, Sgt. 1st Class Tony Knier, a 1994 Cowanesque Valley High School graduate, deployed to Iraq. On Saturday, he was killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded near the Humvee that Knier was in. Knier, 31, leaves behind wife Bobbi Kline Knier and children Marcus, 9; Dakoda, 8, and Kayli, 2.

And lots of positive memories.

Knier was best man at the marriage of Travis and Kasey Dunham in 2000. He graduated from Cowanesque Valley with Kasey, a year behind Travis.

"We were looking through the yearbook (Sunday) night," Kasey said. "And in the part where it says what you want to accomplish, under Tony's picture it said he wanted to join the military and eventually become a drill instructor, so he could get some payback to the people who made him miserable during his own basic training.

"Well, he did both of those things," Kasey Dunham said. "So I guess he accomplished a couple of his goals."

Tony Knier's parents moved to the Westfield area when Tony was quite young. But before long, they decided to return to Lancaster. Tony loved the Cowanesque Valley right from the start and wanted to finish high school there. It was a love he held for the rest of his life.

Travis Dunham's parents, Terry and Paula Dunham, agreed to take him in, and he spent three years in their house in Westfield before graduating, Travis said.

"He wanted to stay up here, and it worked out," Travis Dunham said. "I considered him my brother. We spent a lot of time together.

"He was very family oriented. He loved his kids. He talked about getting out of the Army so he could be with them. He wanted to spend more time with his kids, because he didn't get to see them that much."

Knier loved to hunt and just be outdoors.

"Being in the woods was what he loved," Kline said. "He hunted just about everything. I was convinced for a while there that he was going to raise those three kids on nothing but wild meat.

"He got a nice buck and a doe last year," Kline said. "He loved to hunt spring turkeys. He was planning to come back (here) next spring to hunt them with Travis.

"As much as he loved to hunt, he loved his family more," Kline said. "Bobbi was a cheerleader, and she met him at a football game. She fell for him right away. They were high school sweethearts.

"He thought the world of his kids," he said. "He couldn't be without them, he loved them so much. Especially his little girl. But he loved them all."

He moved around with the Army -- to North Carolina, Georgia, Ranger School in Kentucky -- but he never forgot about his "home" in the mountains, the place where he went to school and met his wife, the hills and valleys he hunted, the land he wanted to own a little piece of. The place where, after retiring in six or seven years, he would spend the rest of his life.

"He wanted a piece of ground," Kline said. "He wanted to buy 30 acres or so back in the sticks and live there with his family. If he had done that, he would have been a happy man."

Knier liked to cook, to spotlight deer, even to work outside, friends said. He loved his country and believed in his job.

"He was full-Army," Kline said.

Mike Schwarz, who is now superintendent of the Galeton Area School District and was principal of Cowanesque Valley High School in 1994, remembered Knier as "a good student" and a "very nice young man."

On Saturday, Kasey Dunham received an e-mail from Knier. He wrote that there were a lot of insurgents around, because the outfit that had been in the same area before his hadn't patrolled very aggressively. The soldiers took a lot of names off the "target list," but new blood replaced them as soon as they were captured or killed, the e-mail read.

"Almost every day, someone here gets hit by an IED," Kasey Dunham read from the email. "But they rarely have an effect."

By the time Dunham read the e-mail, Knier was dead.

On Monday, Kline took the walking stick inside and put it away, without saying a word.

From the Star Gazette

Related Link:
Tony Knier killed by I.E.D.