Micah Gifford remembered

Micah Gifford wrote a message on his MySpace.com Web site recently, urging family and friends not to worry about him as he served in Iraq.

"I am proud to be a part of this fight," the U.S. Army specialist and 27-year-old former Torrance resident wrote. "I signed up to do this for a reason and I hope that everyone understands why this fight continues to be important to every one of us ... not just the Iraqi people.

"Don't pray that I come home soon. Pray that the people that are causing us to stay out there can see the light and change their ways without harm coming to them first."

But two months into his first tour in Iraq, the 1997 South High School graduate died when a makeshift bomb exploded on Dec. 7 as his unit patrolled Baghdad, the U.S. Department of Defense said.

Another soldier, Staff Sgt. Henry W. Linck, 23, of Manhattan, Kan., also was killed.

The men were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

"He didn't swear, he didn't drink, he didn't do drugs. He was pure in all senses," said his sister-in-law, Sara Gifford. "He definitely died doing something he believed in."

Gifford's father, Dale Gifford, presided over Hermosa Beach Church of Christ in the 1990s.

In high school Micah Gifford played on the football team and was vice president of his class.

Although his family encouraged him to aspire to the ministry, Gifford received scholarships to play football at Harding University, a Christian college in Searcy, Ark.

"He was an awesome guy," said football coach Randy Tribble. "He was just a great teammate, a great guy to coach. He was a loyal, dependable, unselfish young man."

After earning a bachelor's degree in business administration in 2002, Gifford planned for a firefighting career and moved to Redding to attend fire sciences school and live closer to his family. His father had taken the post of minister at Auburn Skyline Church of Christ.

But in 2004, Gifford was moved by the news coverage of the death of Nicholas Berg, an American beheaded in a widely broadcast video by an al-Qaida leader in Iraq.

"A couple of days later he said, 'I have enlisted in the Army. I'm young. I'm strong. I need to do something,' " Gifford's father, the Rev. Dale Gifford, recalled Tuesday. "Micah had a very strong sense of justice. He felt like he was being selfish in not trying to do something about what was obvious to him as evil."

It wasn't an easy decision for his family. His brother, Ben, a captain in the Marine Corps, had served two tours of duty in Iraq and another in Afghanistan.

"We always had a bad feeling about this from the very start," the father said. "We felt very blessed to get Ben through the war and a tour through Afghanistan and now we were going to start again."

Knowing the hot spots, Ben Gifford worried about his younger brother's safety. They last spoke on Thanksgiving.

"He was telling me things were good," Ben Gifford said. "He was confident. He didn't have too many worries. He knew he was doing the right thing."

Gifford described the food and living conditions as "pretty good" during his conversation. He said his troop went on three-day missions, but couldn't say exactly where they were positioned.

"I told him we were thinking about him and praying about him, trying to keep his spirits up," the brother said. "He was a good soldier, a model soldier, a model human being."

Gifford considered his own mortality and was afraid he would not come home. Although he loved his girlfriend, Nicole Milano, he did not ask her to marry him. He didn't want her to experience his death as his bride, his brother said.

Gifford sent her a text message on his last day, telling her "Honey, I've got to go to work, we'll talk later."

He never got the chance.

From the Breeze

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