"I couldn't sleep at night. ... There's a war going on. I couldn't do a desk job. My country needs me. I'm going," Carol Graham recalled her son saying. The 24-year-old from Elizabethtown, Ky., was leading a foot patrol Feb. 19, 2004, in Khaldiyah, Iraq, when he was killed by an explosive. He was stationed at Fort Riley.
Graham 's group - 18 soldiers, an Iraqi translator and an Iraqi policeman - were crossing a bridge about 50 miles west of Baghdad on Feb. 19. Graham spotted an explosive taped to a guardrail, said his aunt, Sandra Bush of Frankfort, Ky. He put up his hand to stop the others, who were walking in single file, and looked back to check on them.
The bomb detonated, killing Graham , another soldier and the two Iraqis. His warning probably saved the lives of several others, his aunt said.
"That's just like him, that really is," said Kathy Hilleary, a Brooke Point guidance counselor. "He was always that kind of kid."
Before his deployment, Graham had planned to marry Stacey Martinez on Nov. 6. He gave her a toy bear that still plays his recorded message: "I'm safe and I'll be home soon."
"I kept thinking that Jeff was going to come home safely," Martinez said. "There was no way that God was going to let that family lose another son."
Benjamin Forbes, the assistant coach at the time, remembers that Jeff "always had a great calming sense about him."
In June, Jeff's 21-year-old brother Kevin hanged himself. He suffered from depression and had stopped taking his anti-depressant medicine because he didn't want it to show up on an Army medical exam, Bush said.
Army officials told Jeff after the death of his brother that he didn't have to go to Iraq with others from Fort Riley, Kan. Jeff served with the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Team. He was offered a stateside post at Fort Knox, but wouldn't hear of it, his aunt said.
"He told his fiance: The only thing worse than a war is a soldier not at war.' "
Despite the danger he faced, he "never once showed any fear," Bush said. "He was right where he wanted to be."
