Keith Fiscus remembered

While on his first tour of duty in Iraq, Keith Fiscus told his mom, Pamela, that he had re-enlisted to serve until 2010. Her worried question: “Why?”

“Because I want to serve my country, mom” he told her.

Fiscus’ friends, family and the public will honor him Tuesday evening in Middletown, 10 days after the Army sergeant from the Townsend area was felled by a roadside bomb in Iraq at the age of 26. He will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday.

His family spent the weekend making final arrangements. His mom edited his obituary, and his younger sister Korrie made a poster for his remembrance service.

They also combed through memories, wading in grief – and frustration with the Iraq war.

In a recent interview, Pamela Fiscus remembered her son as an upbeat jokester, avid guitar player, golfer and bass fisherman who offered repeated assurances that he was safe.

“Mom, this is what I want to do. I’m going to be OK,” her son told her. “I’m going to go back as many times as I need to go back.”

Born in Glendale, Calif., Fiscus was the second oldest of four children. His favorite toy, his mother said: GI Joe.

He attended Littlerock High School, north of Los Angeles, where he captained a golf team, his mother, 48, said.

The family relocated to Delaware in 1998, when Keith’s father, Darrell Fiscus, took a job with a southern New Jersey company that distributes metal parts to airline companies.

Fiscus finished his senior year at Glasgow High School, graduating in 1998. He later worked at what is now the Safeway at People’s Plaza, then as a customer service representative for Discover Card.

He took classes at Delaware Technical & Community College, hoping to go into business. But office work didn’t suit him, and he wanted an exciting job where he could travel and establish his own independence, his mother said.

“Sitting in front of a computer would have [driven] him crazy,” she said.

Shortly before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Fiscus told his family he wanted to join the Army. Pamela Fiscus pleaded with her son not go to, but she relented.

“It just takes a certain type of soul to even enlist and want to be a soldier,” Pamela Fiscus said. “His destiny in life was to become an American soldier, and he was a proud American soldier.”

While in Iraq, Keith Fiscus would call or e-mail frequently. He would ask his mother to send him warm clothing for winter, and care packages with mint chewing gum, cherry Pop-Tarts, Gummi Bears, and Orville Redenbacher's Cinnabon Cinnamon Butter Microwave Popcorn.

Since her son died, she’s heard from his comrades – including a woman he dated while serving in Iraq. His mother laughs at how the woman recounted her son picking her up in a Hummer.

She’s also been in contact with her son’s Army buddy, who was driving the Hummer that Fiscus was riding in when it hit a roadside bomb Dec. 2.

It was in Taji, north of Baghdad, where Keith Fiscus’ Hummer was directed to go down a road that hadn’t been swept clear of bombs, she said. An Army spokesman confirmed that Fiscus died in Taji, not Baghdad as the Pentagon earlier indicated.

Once they realized they’d been led astray, they turned around and triggered one of the bombs, with the explosion sending the vehicle tumbling, she said. He apparently died of internal injuries.

Fiscus was to return home in February, and he hoped to eventually become a policeman and work with a department’s bomb squad, she said.

Fiscus’ death has hit the family especially hard. Pamela Fiscus’ mother, father and only sibling, her brother, also have died in the last 18 months. Darrell Fiscus’ father is struggling with a terminal illness.

Mixing with the family’s grief is indignant frustration with a war that has taken the lives of 14 soldiers from Delaware. Pamela Fiscus referred to the Iraq conflict as an “unjust war” and said American soldiers shouldn’t be there.

“He along with everybody else does not deserve this,” Pamela Fiscus said. “It needs to stop. They need to come home. Nobody needs to be going through this, no more. It’s useless. It’s senseless. It’s just too much.”

She also took aim at President Bush, who she said couldn’t empathize because “his children aren’t fighting over there.”

If she wasn’t so bereaved, she said, “I would be picketing the White House, and I don’t care if I get thrown in jail.”

For now, though, she plans to honor her son, whom she described as one of her best friends.

“He’s just another one of God’s angels,” Pamela Fiscus said, “and he took him too quick.”

From the News Journal

Related Link:
Keith E. Fiscus dies of injuries from I.E.D.