Perspective: Fallen soldier lives on in newborn son

Stephen Bicknell was a receiver and backup quarterback for Prattville's 2004 state team

A soldier rests here, the silence cut only by the chirp of birds and distant wind chimes. A woman arrives, speaking softly to the 5-day-old son in her arms.

Today, Miranda Bicknell will introduce him to the father he will never know -- a father taken away by a landmine while fighting a war thousands of miles away.

A mausoleum at Prattville Memorial Gardens is the final resting place for Pfc. Stephen Bicknell, a star quarterback at Prattville High School. In the Army for less than a year, he was killed Oct. 15, 2006, while on patrol with the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, in Samarra, Iraq.

Miranda, 18, was five months pregnant when two soldiers arrived on the doorstep of the home she shared with her sister, Amber, in Tuscaloosa. It was a Monday, and the University of Alabama nursing major was in front of her computer writing a term paper.

The sun had set by the time she heard the news.

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