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http://www.semissourian.com/story/1167181.html



A close cousin of mine, Jeremy Shank, was killed yesterday in Iraq. A more complete report will be released late today to tomorrow.

The loss of every one of our dear friends and siblings in our spiritual family tugs at the bottom of my heart every time, as I believe every one of us are related in God's huge family and every loss is like losing a sibling, often a sibling you've never met or never knew but still a sibling at heart. But this particular loss especially has emotionally tugged at me because he is indeed a spiritual sibling I know, and is related to me, and growing up in the Mississippi Valley much of my early life has made Jackson, Missouri, with a population around 12,000, feel very much like a second home to me, and just realizing that he is only the second serviceman to be lost in combat there since World War II reminds me how we're all in this together and these bittersweet stories of courage, sacrifice and heartbreak come from seemingly all our neighborhoods and backyards.

I clearly remember one summer in 1995 when I was eleven and my grandparents, who live just about four miles from where Jeremy's family lives west of Jackson, Missouri, took us in their powder-blue pick-up truck down State Route 177 to their house on Hickory Hills, just about three miles from the Mississippi River. We just had a sort of casual barbecue and such, swam in the big log pool in their background, played Frisbee out in the sun, spent about an hour and a half wading down on Boutin Lake in the Trail of Tears State Park, the kind of things you can easily envision during a summer as a child. Yet somehow that particular summer memory has always resonated with me, and I think this heartbreaking news has reminded me just why; because I have always had a fond love and admiration for Jeremy, his two brothers Nathan and Chris, their mother Debbie and their father Jim.

Adversity has been nothing new to this wonderful family. Tragically his mother Debbie was the victim in a fatal car accident the following January of that summer I mentioned, which she survived from thank God, but also suffered severe injuries and short-term memory loss. I haven't met the family in four years but my grandparents share news about them occasionally and they mention how Debbie has her good days and her bad days these days, who has healed from most of her injuries and has graduated from her neck-brace, but still copes with her memory loss and other emotional and psychological traumas in her heart. Despite that, the family's spirit has not waned, and they are closer than ever.



I ask you all for your prayers to Jeremy's family, especially Debbie who I think can really use the extra emotional support right now, and again I just want to reiterate how though I disagree with and even condemn the handling of this war to date, I am and will always be proud of Jeremy for his bravery and the courageous sacrifice he has made for our nation, and may he be honored and cherished forever, along with all our other young men and women serving at home and abroad, who are doing likewise. God Bless Them all!

Thank you, everyone! I promise I'll post a picture of him if I can find one on-line, as I don't currently have a scanner operating.



Love,
Noah Eaton

[This message has been edited by Mistletoe Angel (09-08-2006 01:33 AM).]

Noah~
I am so sorry to know that Jeremy has perished while on a mission for our country~

I will lift his family in prayer vigil for continuing comfort in their loss~

*Huglets*
~*Marge*~

~*The sound of a kiss is not as strong as that of a cannon, but it's echo endures much longer*~
Email -         noles1@totcon.com     

Here's another article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which Jeremy's father (and Jeremy himself) express their dissent and frustration of the Iraq war.

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Fallen soldier's father blasts Iraq war

By Kim Bell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/08/2006


A former Belleville man whose teenage son was killed in Iraq this week lashed out at the U.S. involvement there, saying, "We have boys dying for some unguided reason."

The dead soldier was Pfc. Jeremy R. Shank, 18.

Shank was from Jackson, a town in Cape Girardeau County, about 100 miles south of St. Louis. He died Wednesday in Balad of injuries suffered in Hawijah when he encountered small arms fire during a dismounted security patrol.

Shank's father, James Shank, said, "We need to be out of there." He said his son - who enlisted at the age of 17 - told his father as much in angry e-mails and a last phone call in late August.

"He was scared and up to his elbows," the elder Shank said.

Jeremy Shank left high school early, earned a high school equivalency degree and joined the Army in May 2005, his father said.

"He was in a rebellious period and wanted to get out of the house," James Shank said. "But he was proud to be a soldier. It was what he wanted to do ... He was a hell of a kid."

He was due to come home on leave in November.

Jeremy Shank was stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii and was one of 7,000 25th Infantry Division soldiers who deployed to Iraq in July. He was trained to speak Arabic and was with a striker force, his father said.

It was the fourth death in recent days of servicemen in Iraq with ties to the St. Louis region. Earlier this week, Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher G. Walsh, 30, of St. Louis, was killed in Al Anbar province. Walsh was an emergency medical technician with the St. Louis Fire Department and served as a corpsman attached to a Marine unit. Army Staff Sgt. Michael L. Deason, 28, of Desloge, was killed on Aug. 31 in Ad War, Iraq, after a bomb exploded near his vehicle. Two days before that, Army Sgt. Matthew J. Vosbein was killed in Yusifiyah, Iraq, when a bomb exploded near his patrol. Vosbein was from Louisiana, according to the military, but was to be buried in West Frankfort, Ill., according to published reports.

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By the way, even if Jeremy and his family were staunchly in support of this war which I don't believe in, I would and still will forever be proud of Jeremy regardless of his views, as in any case he has made a courageous sacrifice that deserves to be honored and immortalized forever.

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Sincerely,
Noah Eaton

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other"

Mother Teresa

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other"

Mother Teresa

believe in what your heart feels...