Craig (Lance C.) Springer laid to rest

LAKESIDE - A young man who went out of his way to give candy to Iraqi kids, serve his church and make people laugh, made hundreds cry on Tuesday.

He was Sgt. Lance Craig Springer II, killed in Iraq on March 23rd.

Springer was remembered in a sanctuary he knew well.

On a clear spring afternoon five days before Easter, the green pastures of North Texas couldn't be further from Baghdad.

Mourners filling Lakeside Church of God strained to hear a young man's laughter, not the explosion that silenced it.

"He said, 'send me gum, candy and toys I can give to the children,'" remembered one.

The army called him Sergeant Lance Springer.

At church he was Craig.

"Craig was a good boy," said the pastor.

They remembered Craig the good boy, in the good days - they watched him grow up again, but never grow old.

He was 23 when he was killed.

"I also told him if I could I would take his place over there because I had already been through the war and I knew what he was going into," said one veteran.

These are the people he fought for, and fought beside.

"He was a giver, always putting someone else before himself," remembered a colleague.

"He constantly was talking about the kids. That they will have a better future because we are there. He just enjoyed doing his job over there."

Staff Sgt. Brannon Hebert accompanied the body back from Iraq.

Springer was an airborne combat medic.

"Craig, he was a very nice person. Every time I saw him he was trying to make a joke about everything he did," Herbert said.

That's the message Springer's family wants to deliver.

A life lost. A life taken, but not wasted.

"He felt the sacrifice and danger was worth the difference he could make."

From KVUE

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