Jason Hamill remembered by family, friends

SALEM, Conn. -- Sharon Hamill was home alone, sitting at the table eating lunch when she was startled by a noise around the garage. Then the doorbell rang.

She looked through the tinted window and spotted a green uniform. It must be her son Jason, an Army captain due home any day from Iraq who had a reputation for pulling pranks.

"I went to the door to let him in," Sharon Hamill said. "When I saw two men in uniform, I knew what it was. They looked at me and shook their head."

Jason was dead. He and two other soldiers were killed Nov. 26 in Baghdad by a roadside bomb while riding in an armored vehicle.

"In our eyes, he was a hero," his mother said Wednesday, fighting back tears.

Hamill's family is among the latest to grieve in a war that has taken the lives of nearly 3,000 U.S. service members and lasted longer than America's participation in World War II.

Hamill, 31, had spent a year in Iraq clearing the type of bomb that killed him and many other American troops.

"The hard part is finding the bombs," he wrote in an e-mail to his family in January. "They're very creative at hiding them but we have tons of technology and techniques to find them."

Hamill, a triplet, grew up in Salem, a tiny rural town in eastern Connecticut still sprinkled with farms. He wrestled in high school and played the drums in the band.

That's when Jon Stadler met Hamill and quickly became friends. When Hamill was around, everyone knew something funny would happen.

On a dare Hamill jumped in a frigid lake on New Year's Eve. He and Stadler took the wheels off a friend's car and plastered it with bumper stickers. Another time Hamill's father caught him tipping cows.

"He said they do tip," said his father, Richard Hamill. "But one of them starting chasing them, so they decided to get the heck out of there."

After graduating from the University of Connecticut, Hamill followed in his father's footsteps and joined the military nearly a decade ago.

"I think that just fits his personality," his father said. "He's kind of a rugged guy, a little bit on the dangerous side of life."

But family and friends saw another side to the warrior when he met his wife, Karen, while stationed in Texas. When the couple married last year, Hamill brought tears to his wife's eyes as he gave a toast pledging his love and respect.

"You could just hear it in his voice and see it in his face when he talked about her," Stadler said.

Hamill served in Kosovo and Afghanistan before heading to Iraq a year ago. Hamill wrote lengthy e-mails home but was guarded in what he told his parents.

His family asked if he needed better body armor, but Hamill said he was well protected.

In January, his mother told him about a wicked ice storm in Connecticut and promised to send a package.

"If you slit the top open in the middle, the cookies may get slit open," she wrote.

As the violence escalated, Hamill's mother avoided the news. His father learned only recently that his son was in Baghdad, hoping he was in a safer outlying area.

Hamill's e-mails grew shorter. By the end of his tour, he admitted he was emotionally drained.

"We're all ready to get out of here," Hamill wrote in his final e-mail home a day before he died. "It's been a long year, but only a few more days!"

Hamill and his wife, who lived in Kileen, Texas, planned to start a family. Hamill was thinking of going back to college.

The couple had already bought plane tickets to travel home to Connecticut in January for Hamill's 32nd birthday with his siblings.

After his mother received the bad news, she called her husband at work.

"We have two Army men here to talk about Jason," she said.

Richard Hamill didn't understand. Jason wasn't home. Why are they there?

"Are you all right?" he asked his wife.

"No," she answered. "There's been an accident."

His wife grew silent.

"Is Jason alive?" he asked.

"No," she said.

Hamill rushed home.

Now a flag flies at half mast in the front yard of the family home. The phone and the doorbell ring constantly with flowers and condolences.

He will be buried Wednesday in Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.

It hurts Richard Hamill to dwell too much. He knows his son believed in a mission that has grown increasingly unpopular back home.

He wrestles with why his son was out on another mission just days before his departure.

"They transferred responsibility to the new unit," his father said. "His unit was all packed up and ready to come home."

From Newsday

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