My Life and Times

December 9, 2004
Pain of War Draws Bead on New York RegionBy ALAN FEUER
he carpenter from Brooklyn died in a Humvee crash.
The Wall Street analyst was killed by small-arms fire.
The former high school running back from western New York State was blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade.
An unknown gunman killed the firefighter from New Jersey.
The Connecticut wrestler was shot while on patrol, looking for roadside bombs.
At times in the Iraq war, it has seemed that different parts of this country have borne their share of the casualties, and the distribution of deaths has spread across the map. Since Nov. 7, 19 servicemen from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have been killed in Iraq, making it the deadliest term for soldiers from the region since the start of the war. The main assault on Falluja began on Nov. 8, and the Pentagon has said that 136 American soldiers were killed in Iraq in November, the most of any month since the war began last year. They came from Brooklyn, like Joseph Behnke, the carpenter whose Humvee crashed, and from the towers of Manhattan, where Dimitrios Gavriel worked analyzing stocks before he went to war.
They ranged in age from 20 to 45. They had names as varied as the places they left behind: Engeldrum, Baker, Gasiewicz, Freeman, Behnke, Ryan, Calderon.
"I can tell you that when I got the phone call that he was killed, I got a knot in my stomach," said Leonard Dolan, the fire chief in Cranford, N.J., referring to Stephen C. Benish, one of his firefighters, who died on Nov. 28 while on patrol in Ramadi.
"Given that we've had a lot of casualties in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region recently, I'm sure it's had the same impact on others," Chief Dolan said.
With 14 deaths this month and last, New York alone has much to mourn. Only two states have suffered more since November: California, with 21 dead, and Texas, with 17. There has been no sharp increase in the percentage of those being dispatched to Iraq from the New York area. The spate of deaths is, rather, one of the vagaries of a war in which a handful of deaths on a given day - in a Humvee, by the side of the road, in a firefight - can skew statistics.
The sting will be felt anew this morning when thousands of firefighters from across the country are expected to gather for the funeral of Sgt. Christian Engeldrum at St. Benedict's Church in the Bronx. Sergeant Engeldrum, a New York City firefighter serving with the New York National Guard, was the first city employee to die while fighting in this war. He left behind a pregnant wife and two sons when he shipped out from the Bronx to Baghdad on Nov. 2. On Nov. 29, he was killed by a roadside bomb near Baghdad.
"Nobody could talk him out of going," said Lt. Brian Horton, an officer at Ladder Company 61 in Co-op City in the Bronx. "Nobody would talk him out of going. It's what he wanted to do."
Sergeant Engeldrum, 39, was described by his co-workers as a firefighter's firefighter, the kind of man you wanted at your side. He drove the rig, they said. He made his peers feel safe. His big voice filled the firehouse. He even cooked - burritos were his specialty. He was known around the house as Drum.
Pfc. Wilfredo F. Urbina, 29, a fellow member of the New York Guard and a volunteer firefighter in Baldwin, on Long Island, was killed in the same attack.
Sgt. James Matteson, 23, was known around the football fields of Celoron, N.Y., as J.C. In high school, he had been a sprightly running back scouted by college coaches from across western New York.
But Mr. Matteson had a different plan and, in 1998, enlisted in the Army.
"I said, 'Well, what about college, son?' " his father, James L. Matteson, a 45-year-old disabled truck driver, recalled. "And he said, 'Dad, I don't want to lose my legs because of injury, and I want to carry on the tradition.' "
The military tradition could not be stronger for the family. The Mattesons are from a long line of military men, dating to the Revolutionary War. Mr. Matteson's great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Calvin Matteson lost his left hand fighting in the Civil War, James L. Matteson said, but returned to the fray when the wound had healed.
James Matteson's sister Hope Freedom Matteson served in Iraq for a year as a mechanic for the Army but went home after breaking her foot last year. She has since re-enlisted. "Honestly, I don't think my heart could take it again," James L. Matteson said, describing his fears about his daughter's safety.
James Matteson was killed in Falluja when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his Humvee on Nov. 12.
Kevin Dempsey of Monroe, Conn., would have turned 24 today. But he was killed on Nov. 13 when his Marine reconnaissance battalion was attacked in Anbar Province in Iraq.
Corporal Dempsey - who, as a baby, was nicknamed Jack, after the boxer - joined the Marines in March 2002 and rose through an elite training course that included diving and survival school, said his mother, Barbara Dempsey. A wrestler, he was 18 when he entered basic training. He called the recruiter on Sept. 11, 2001, moments after watching on television as the towers crumbled.
He was the self-appointed guardian of the family, his mother said. "Jack always felt he had to look out for his sister and me," she said.
Corporal Dempsey's protective streak extended to farm animals and stray dogs. Members of his unit in Iraq sent Mrs. Dempsey pictures of her son freeing cows tethered on short leads without adequate drinking water. He vowed that when he returned from Iraq, he would smuggle home an orphaned puppy and buy a house on the beach in North Carolina, not far from where he trained.
Mrs. Dempsey said that when he died, her son was doing what he wanted. The thought is a comfort, but it does not blunt her grief.
"I can't describe how I feel other than to say my heart hurts," she said. "He was so full of life."
A roadside bomb killed Specialist David Mahlenbrock on Dec. 3. He was 20; his wife, Melissa, is 19. Their daughter, Kadence, is 10 months old. When Specialist Mahlenbrock was home on leave from the Army two months ago in Maple Shade, N.J., he took the infant everywhere, Mrs. Mahlenbrock said. They went to the movies, to the zoo and out to dinner. "He wanted to make sure he got in as much stuff with her as he could."
Specialist Mahlenbrock made videos of their adventures and asked his wife to play them for the child. "It was very important to him to make these for her," she said. "He wanted her to listen to his voice."
Mrs. Mahlenbrock listened, too, in the frequent calls she received from Iraq. "In every call," she said, "he promised me he'd come home."
The last call she received from her husband came on Thursday, Dec. 2. He made the promise, same as always, but he could not keep it. It was the day before he died.
Staff Sgt. Henry Irizarry was supposed to go home on Dec. 15 for a two-week leave in time for Christmas. Instead, he died in Taji, Iraq, on Dec. 3. His Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb.
Born in Puerto Rico, Sergeant Irizarry moved to the Bronx with his family as a teenager and graduated from William H. Taft High School. He was 38 and was a member of the 69th Infantry of the New York National Guard.
He had served with the Guard for 20 years. His wife, Jessica, said that while he loved the military, he had his eye on retirement and never expected to be sent to Iraq.
"Still, he would write and say that everything is fine," Mrs. Irizarry, 25, said. "He didn't want me to worry."
She said her husband was a religious man who spent time at Aposento Alto, a Pentecostal church in Waterbury, Conn., where the couple moved in 1997. News of his death has sent a steady stream of church members to the Irizarrys' home.
The last time they spoke, Sergeant Irizarry, who always liked to travel, told his wife he would take the family to Puerto Rico for Christmas.
Their 5-year-old son has had nightmares since he learned about his father's death. The boy writes postcards and insists that his mother send them overseas.
" 'This is for Papi,' he says, even though I've told him his father is gone," Mrs. Irizarry said.
"He doesn't understand."
Lisa W. Foderaro, Robert Hanley and Stacey Stowe contributed reporting for this article.
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