Corry P. Tyler dies 'of injuries suffered when his helicopter crashed'

When her husband died a year ago in Georgia, Jennifer Tyler was grateful that the couple's only son, Corry, could take leave from the U.S. Army in Iraq and come home to be with her.

"He got home, and he was strong for his mother," a friend, Jeffrey Pace of Woodbine, Ga., told the Jacksonville Times-Union.

On Thursday, Tyler's mother announced he would be buried in Atlanta next to his father, whom he revered.

Corry Paul Tyler, 29, an Army captain and 1999 West Point graduate from Woodbine, Ga., was among 14 soldiers killed in the crash of a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Kirkuk in northern Iraq on Wednesday.

Tyler and three others, who served as the Black Hawk's crew, were from Fort Lewis.

Tyler, on his third deployment to Iraq, is survived by his wife, Kathy, and three small children in the Tacoma area. His mother was en route to Washington to join them, a family friend said.

Tyler, 29, graduated from Camden County High School in 1995 and earned appointment to U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which he joined that summer, the Rev. William Warnock, a family friend and pastor of Woodbine United Methodist Church, told reporters.

Tyler hoped to go to medical school and become an Army physician. He was to have heard soon if he had been accepted, one of his high school friends, Jeffrey Pace, told the Jacksonville Times-Union.

"He loved his God, and he loved his family more than anything else," Pace said. Tyler admired his father who had served in the Army, Pace said.

"His daddy and his mama were so proud, so proud," Warnock told the newspaper. He spent time with Tyler's mother Wednesday.

"Mrs. Tyler is broken," Warnock said.

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer