10 Years Ago Today, Doylestown Soldier Was Among First Casualties of War On Terror

Ten years ago today, on October 19, 2001, Kristofor Stonesifer of Doylestown became one of the first two American soldiers to die in the War on Terror.

It's a date I can never forget, because on my key ring, I have a heavy brass medallion inscribed with his name and date of death, and because I live 50 yards from the picture of him that hangs at the entrance to the Bucks County Courthouse, which I pass almost every day.

Kris, a graduate of Central Bucks West High School, was 28 years old, an Army Ranger from a local family with deep military roots. His unit, the 75th Ranger Regiment, was on a mission from the deck of the USS Kitty Hawk to establish a base in Pakistan in support of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Ten years ago tonight, along with most Americans, his mother, Ruth, of Kintnersville, was at home watching television when the news broke that, after an intense bombing campaign, ground operations had begun in an effort to defeat the Taliban and take out Osama bin Laden.

Along with most Americans, Ruth sat transfixed on her sofa as she watched the greenish-tinged night-vision video footage of American soldiers pouring out of a helicopter loop over and over on CNN. The crawl along the bottom of the screen reported that two American servicemen had died in the early hours of that phase of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Ruth would later tell me that she remembered thinking how terrible the moment must be for two families who were just learning that a loved one had died in the first armed conflict of the new millenium. She was glad that Kris was safe and sound in Fort Benning, GA, with his unit. She knew that because he had called her a few days earlier.

The next day, Oct. 20, at her job, she received a visit from "a man in a green uniform" bearing news dreaded by every military family. Pfc Kristofor Stonesifer, along with Specialist Jonn J. Edmunds, 20, of Cheyenne, WY, had been killed when their Blackhawk helicopter made a hard landing, the two men spilled out the open door, and the aircraft rolled over on them.

I met Ruth several months after Kris's death when she arrived at The Writers Room of Bucks County, a writers' resource center I ran, hoping to find some help writing a book about her son.

Since then, we have collaborated on articles for major national publications, and we tried unsuccessfully to find a publisher for her book, only to be told by one editor in 2004 that "in a year the war will be over and no one will care." That was seven years, 4,500 deaths, and more than 33,000 wounded ago.

In the years since, Ruth has reached out to hundreds of other parents and loved ones of freshly fallen soldiers and organized the sewing of hundreds of quilts for mothers and wives of the dead. Two years ago she served as president of the American Gold Star Mothers, an organization of families of fallen soldiers that provides support services to wounded veterans. She was instrumental in raising the money to create a Fisher House facility at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where families receiving the remains of their loved ones can rest, pray, and grieve in private.

In the next few years, the media will serve up a number of 10-year anniversaries marking the invasion of Iraq, President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and so on. I hope this is not the only mention of a day in history which I think of as more important than all the rest of the ten-year anniversaries I expect we'll be asked to mark in the years ahead.

In a speech she made to her son's fellow Rangers just four months after he died, Ruth said of Kris:

"Friends have written to me saying he died for his country. This may be true, but I believe that Kris died for what he valued most, Friendship and Truth. He wrote us a last letter. In it he said, 'I don’t know if you’ll ever get an explanation of how or why I died.  I’d like to think I died for something important or vital to the mission here. But I don’t think it is. It’s just a gravy mission and I fully expect to come back without firing a shot. So if you are reading this something went horribly wrong or it was just a bad luck Murphy’s Law type fluke. I’ve had a good life and I’m happy to have spent it with all of you.'"

Some day, the banners outside the courthouse honoring our local fallen soldiers will have faded, perhaps replaced by a stone monument that jurors and tourists will glance at on their way to lunch or the movies. The anniversaries we mark now will be replaced by new ones that evolve out of conflicts not yet imagined or fought.

For all the Ruth Stonesifers of the world, however, every day is a dreaded anniversary and a reminder of the price some of us pay for the freedom all of us enjoy.

The medallion I carry on my key ring was given to me by Ruth, and I often show it to people because it is a physical, tangible way to remind them of the price of war. People I show it to will hold it, turn it over, look at it closely, and pause. It is always a sobering moment. I wish every American carried such a coin. It might be the one symbol more powerful even than the flag that truly unites us as a nation and a society.