I think it pays to remember that there are 800+ stories like this throughout the US, and four or five every day:
http://www.montanaforum.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=156&mo
de=thread&order=0&thold=0
Say a prayer, keep him and his family in your thoughts:
The dream of a Montana cowboy to sing his way to fame ended this week when the 20-year-old from Sand Springs serving in the U.S. Army died while on patrol in Iraq.
Owen D. Witt, a private in the 1st Infantry Division, died Monday when his armored vehicle rolled. Witt is the second soldier from Montana to die in Iraq during the war. On Wednesday, Witt's mother, Karen Witt, and his brother, Kelly Witt, remembered him as a young man with aspirations to be a country singer. Karen Witt said Owen, the youngest of her four sons, was deployed to Iraq in February from a base in Germany. He kept in contact through e-mail and occasional phone calls, she said. The mother was preparing a package to send to him Tuesday when she learned of his death.
Owen Witt had recently talked about bringing his German girlfriend to Montana, Karen Witt said, and he had expressed a longing to return home.
"He didn't want to go," Kelly Witt said. "He was kind of scared, but he didn't have much time to think about it."
"He said, 'When I get back to Montana, Mom, I'm never leaving,' " Karen Witt recalled. "Now he never will."