Army Cpl. Henry Brown, 4/08/2003

Today's random act of kindness was at Chick Fil-A, where I bought breakfast for a guy behind me in line. It just hit me as I was pulling up to the window that maybe I should do another favor for someone.

As I drove off, I tried to disappear in traffic, because I like to try to do these things anonymously, but the guy was behind me for a good way. I took a picture of his car in my rearview mirror to post here, but you could see the university stickers on my window in the picture, and they're pretty specific, so just take it from me. A guy in a silver car. He was eating chicken minis and drinking a Diet Coke.

This one was in honor of Army Cpl. Henry Brown. He was 22 when he died on April 8, 2003, from injuries he received in an enemy rocket attack south of Baghdad.  He was the third soldier from Mississippi to die in the War on Terror.

When Henry Brown left for the war, his mom made sure he packed his Bible. Every time they talked, she'd make sure he was reading it and saying his prayers.

"I didn't have him long, but I thank God for the years I did have him," said his mother, Rhonda James-Brown, 50. "I'm crying, but I have an inner peace. I just know that Henry is with the Lord and his grandma."

Brown graduated in 1999 from Natchez High School. He joined the Junior ROTC in high school, planning even then to go into the Army. He didn't do sports and activities, except JROTC.

But to his friends and former classmates, Brown was a valuable friend, a quiet, kind young man. He enlisted after graduation. Brown met and married his wife, JoDona, in the Army. They were married less than a year.

She was serving in Kuwait when he was killed.

It struck me as I wrote this that with so many of these soldiers, we talk about their high school activities in their obituaries, but that's because in so many cases, that's all the life they got to have.

They lived as boys and girls, but died as men and women, in a foreign land, for the freedom of others. On a meager salary, and  in most cases leaving parents to bury their children. And to the man, almost every fallen soldier's friends and family will tell you that they died doing what they loved, and they wouldn't have it any other way.

There is no greater love and heroism than that, is there?

Thank you, Cpl. Brown, for your sacrifice. We will not forget.

(The picture to the left is during a memorial for Cpl. Brown in Iraq.)