Jay Gauthreaux remembered

THIBODAUX -- Sgt. Jay Ryan Gauthreaux told others he believed his tour of duty in Iraq would help keep his 4-year-old son -- and other children -- safe.

And for now, that is what offers some comfort to loved ones still coping with word that he will never get the chance to see if he succeeded.

"He was dedicated," said Gauthreaux’s brother-in-law, Lance Bergeron of Thibodaux, who himself served in Iraq as a member of the Louisiana National Guard. "This was his second tour. He could have gotten out of the Army, but he re- enlisted because he believed in what he was doing."

A member of the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas, Gauthreaux had been back in Iraq for a little less than two months, his family estimates.

Word that he had been killed came Monday to the fallen soldier’s father, Michael Gauthreaux, at his home in Gonzales.

Bergeron said the family was told Gauthreaux was the victim of an improvised explosive device, one of the roadside bombs that has claimed so many U.S. soldiers, sailors and marines in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad.

He was a gunner on a Humvee, Bergeron said.

Further information has not yet been provided, and Bergeron did not know if any other members of Gauthreaux’s unit were injured or killed.

The Department of Defense has not yet confirmed Gauthreaux’s death. Such confirmations are often delayed to give families time to adjust and make their own notifications to friends and relatives.

Gauthreaux, who grew up in Vacherie, joined the Army immediately after graduating St. James High School in 1998, foregoing a class trip.

At St. James he played tennis and soldiering was his chosen career.

After a brief marriage, Bergeron said, Gauthreaux won custody of his son, Devin, who remained with relatives while he served.

"His dad is everything to him," Bergeron said Tuesday night of the child, a happy-go-lucky, rough-and-tumble little boy who loved to wrestle with his dad.

Devin had yet to be told that he would never see his father again.

Gauthreaux, relatives said, was a man of action rather than words.

Short and stocky "built like a brick house" in his brother-in-law’s words, Gauthreaux "could be outgoing when he would get around people he was comfortable with. Jay would give you the shirt off his back."

From the Comet

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