Joshua Sheppard remembered

QUINTON -- When he spoke to his mother last Thursday, he said he'd call her again on Christmas; that his scheduled four days off had been cut because they needed a senior operator for a weekend mission.

But Julie Young never received that Christmas Day telephone call. Instead, two Army sergeants came up the walk of her Russellville home last Friday to inform her that her second oldest son had been killed in Iraq.

Twenty-two-year-old Joshua Sheppard had plans for his life, but he knew it was going to take some extra work on his part to bring those dreams to fruition. That's why he joined the Army after graduating from Quinton High School in 2003. "His grades were OK, but they weren't enough to get him into college without help," Julie Young said. "I'm disabled. My husband's disabled.

"We couldn't afford to help him go to school."

Instead, Joshua Sheppard was counting on the military's G.I. Bill to help him with money for college. It would take a four-year commitment to serve on active duty, as well as another four in the inactive reserve, but he figured the experience he'd gain from working as a heavy equipment operator in an engineer unit wouldn't hurt. Neither would the time he spent on active duty, which would count toward his retirement if he was able to get a job at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant the way he hoped.

"He had plans," Young said Tuesday. "He had his head on straight and had his life figured out."

Joshua Sheppard had always enjoyed working with his hands and his cedar creations were virtually works of art, according to family members. He hoped to one day be able to open his own company, doing carpentry, cabinet making and heavy equipment work -- "Whatever a particular job called for," Young said. "That's one reason he wanted to operate heavy equipment in the Army, so he could get the training he needed."

Sheppard's enlistment contract called for him to remain in the United States, with no overseas tours for three and a half years, she said.

After completing basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., and advanced individual training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., he was ordered to Fort Drum, N.Y., where he was assigned to an engineer unit of the 10th Mountain Division.

"He didn't much like it there, but he said he could handle it because he had to," Sheppard's mother recalled.

Sheppard liked it even less when he and other soldiers from the 642nd Engineer Support Co., 7th Engineer Battalion, were deployed to Iraq in September. Still, he said he'd make the best of it.

Enlistment extended

Sheppard had already finished more than three-quarters of his active duty commitment when the Army involuntarily extended his time by another six months. "He had nine months left," Young said. "They extended him for six months so they could send him to Iraq because they go over for a one year tour and then they want them to have three months for debriefing, to make sure their heads aren't messed up or anything."

Young said that although she's generally the rock everyone in her family leans on, when she saw the two servicemembers walking up her drive as she talked on the telephone to a friend Friday, "I just started saying 'No, no, no, I can't deal with this right now.' To tell the truth, I kind of fell apart."

But even though Young felt as if her heart had been ripped from her chest just before Christmas, she couldn't withdraw into herself. There was too much to do -- including breaking the news to her other four sons.

That was hard enough to do with 17-year-old Ricky, a Quinton High School senior who still lives at home, and 19-year-old Samuel, who's out of the nest but still lives nearby. It was even harder to tell 23-year-old Reuben, a soldier currently stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, and 20-year-old William, stationed with the Marine Corps in Japan.

"I thought I hurt a lot the day they told me about Joshua, but I died all over again the day I had to tell my son in Japan about it," Young said. "That was really hard.

"It tore him up, because he and Joshua were always really close."

Joshua was also close to his mother, stepfather and other siblings, as well as to many others who called him "friend."

'All great boys'

"They're all great boys," said Quinton school Superintendent Sherry Prentice. "They're just good; and smart. Every one of them is smart."

"He was going to buy some land around here and he wanted to start his own business," Sheppard's mother said. "He wanted to buy some land and keep the cows off so he could have a place for the deer and other animals to run."

"He could eat his weight in fish and wild game," Young said. "He liked squirrel and dumplings, fried rabbit, deer jerky. He was a real Okie."

When he was still in elementary school, Sheppard told his mother he wanted to be a preacher of the "gospel of love, that's what he called it," Young said.

That year for career day he dressed in a white dress shirt, black pants and a red tie and carried a Bible.

"For a bashful little boy, that was a big step," Young said. "He was polite as the day is long. He was every parent's dream of a good kid."

"He just wanted to be an honest, hard-working person and he said that after he got everything else going, he said 'Then I'll look for a girl who likes living in the country.'"

"We don't belong over there," Young said of the war in Iraq. "They don't want us there and we don't need to be there.

"If President Bush wants someone over there to guard his buddies' oil wells, he should go over there himself. He didn't need to send Joshua to get killed or any of the other young men that have been killed."

Young said all three of her military sons made Ricky promise not to join the service; a promise she plans to ensure he keeps. "They don't need another one of my boys."

With light blonde hair, green eyes and a very fair complexion, "My poor Joshua stuck out like a sore thumb over there," Young said. "I always told him to keep his head covered up so they wouldn't see his light hair so easily."

Young's voice trembled slightly. "He said 'When I get out and come back to Oklahoma, I'm never stepping out of it again.

"I guess he won't have to worry about that now."

The Army is giving Spec. Joshua Sheppard a lateral transfer to corporal, his mother said, in addition to a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Funeral services will be at Palestine Church, with interment to be at the Lona Valley Cemetery near Kinta.

"That will have to wait awhile though," Young said. "They still have to ship his body home."

From the Transcript

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