James Wosika laid to rest

"It's all right to be sad."

Those words were as much solace as the family and friends of soldier James M. Wosika Jr., could find Friday at the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Wosika, 24, of St. Paul, was killed Jan. 9 while serving his tenth month in Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard.

The stateside funeral was not the first time Wosika, who had said that fallen soldiers were heroes, was remembered.

Soldiers held a memorial ceremony in Fallujah last week for the young man, according to Lt. Col. Bill Lieder, who leads the 1/34 Brigade Troops Battalion of the 1st Brigade Combat Team Division of the 34th Infantry Division.

"They did a real nice job of honoring him here," Lieder said in a tele-conference Friday from Iraq. "It's difficult to say the least. It's hard on everybody."

Same back home.

Before the ceremony, Governor Tim Pawlenty, Mayor Chris Coleman and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum took their seats, but not until pausing at the flag-draped casket in a side chapel. They were joined by crying mourners.

As the soldier was wheeled to the front of the cathedral, his body passed photomontages of his life. The pictures showed a newborn Wosika in a hospital incubator; a young boy on his first communion; a young man in dress greens, posing before a date.

Then came the pictures of a dirtied soldier in Iraq. He cradled a rifle in one hand, flashed a peace sign in another.

A little over a month before, Wosika's friend and fellow soldier Bryan T. McDonough was remembered in the same way, in the same place.

McDonough was killed by an improvised explosive device while driving a vehicle Dec. 2 in Fallujah.

Wosika, a 2000 graduate of Highland Park, died when an improvised explosive device detonated near him. None of the other soldiers on foot patrol with him in Fallujah were injured.

He served with the Crookston-based Company B, 2nd Battalion, 136th Infantry. He had planned on returning home in March; his unit had its tour extended until summer.

Wosika was the 10th Minnesota guardsman killed in Iraq and the 43rd member of the military from the state to die since the war started in 2003.

That number was not missed by Archbishop Harry Flynn in his homily.

"Another young son, brother, grandson," Flynn said to the approximately 2,000 people in the cathedral. "James Wosika has left us."

Flynn said that he prays every day over the dog tags left to him last March when the state's largest contingent of soldiers since World War II went overseas to fight. And though he asks God to protect the men and women, he said, the Lord still calls them home.

"He was someone who was only beginning to live his life," Flynn said.

"It's all right to be sad."

Kim Contreras last saw Wosika in August while he was home on leave. The two grew up next to each other.

"It's sad. He was a great guy. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for his friends or anybody," she said. "I don't think anybody who knows him has one bad memory of him."

After the ceremony, St. Paul Fire Department Truck and Ladder Engine 10 helped lead the procession to Fort Snelling National Cemetery, where soldiers, family and friends braced against a cold wind. One of Wosika's relatives works for the department, a relative said, and the soldier had plans to become a firefighter himself.

The crowd heard the final blessings while bundled up in clothes that reflected the young man — a Highland Park High School letter jacket, pink ties and shirts (pink was supposedly Wosika's favorite color), Army dress greens — and withstood a 20-minute burial .

One soldier held his ungloved hand in salute the entire ceremony. It was raw and shaking by the end.

Behind him, a young soldier cried. The tears left dark marks on her green blouse.

The rifle guard fired 21 shots, a lone bugler played "Taps" and a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace."

The funeral over, the salutes dropped, mourners, arm in arm for warmth and comfort, quietly walked back to their cars.

Read the rest at the Herald

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