In services tomorrow, family and friends will remembering the life of Army Specialist Justin Rollins, a soldier from Newport, New Hampshire who was killed in Iraq this month.
Rollins and 5 other men died when their humvees hit a roadside bomb in Samarra.
His loss has been hard on his family, and the high-school sweetheart he planned to marry.
And it’s shaken his home town, where some who knew him say military service gave his life meaning, before the war took it away.
New Hampshire Public Radio correspondent Shannon Mullen reports.
Army Specialist Justin Rollins. (Courtesy the Rollins family.)
When Justin Rollins escaped a roadside bomb explosion in November with only shrapnel wounds, his mom told the local newspaper she was proud of him.
She said he’d be home on leave in April.
But a few weeks ago, the news came that he’d been killed by another bomb.
Rollins’s dad tried talking to reporters, but it was too painful.
And he felt they might politicize his son’s death, so he stopped.
Without his family’s help, I thought it would be hard to get a sense of who Rollins was for this story.
But Newport's a town of only 6000, and people there remember him well.
At the high school, the staff-members who knew Rollins best tried to describe him.
Thurlow: when he was here, he was pudgy, he wasn’t in the outstanding shape that he was when he came back from the military.
Football coach Bill Thurlow says Rollins played center, but he did more to boost the team’s morale than its winning record.
Thurlow also taught Rollins social studies:
Thurlow: probably the subject I remember him having the strongest opinion about were guns. Guns and weapons. He loved guns, hunting as a hobby, and he was very defensive about any kind of position allowing hunting, having second amendment rights, and was very, very vocal about those kinds of subjects.
Thurlow says Rollins also supported the war in Iraq and wasn't shy about speaking up about it during class debates.
But he was only average academically, says English teacher Ellen Soucy.
Soucy: sometimes students who are kind of unfocused when they graduate, never really find something that they love doing. Justin was lucky that he took to the military, and the military took to him, and the short time he was in it he did well, and he loved it.
All the teachers I talked to told me Justin’s joining the military changed him.
They said he visited the school recently looking trimmer in his uniform, telling stories from basic training, everyone got the sense he’d finally grown up.
He stopped by to see Ellen Soucy, and she says, talking with him, it was clear he’d outgrown being average.
Soucy: If he had stayed here, he could have worked in some of the fast food places… local gun manufacturer – factory work. But I suspect that none of those things were his passions, and he’s lucky he found his passion, and was able, at least for a short while, to do what he wanted to do, to find what is important, and what he could do to make this world a better place. I think he found that.
Howe: both of us used to be troublemakers in town, so, we kinda calmed down after we got into the military.
Army Corporal Christopher Howe grew up in Newport with Rollins, and they served in Iraq at the same time, but in different units.
Howe is home now – getting treatment for injures from a tank mine explosion.
Before that, he says he saw Rollins a couple times a week in Iraq.
They’d talk about home, and share cigars that Howe’s sister sent over.
Howe: he was a good guy, he was real honest. And when he was over there he was brave as hell. He stuck his neck out for all the guys he was with.
Army Specialist Justin Rollins. (Courtesy the Rollins family.)
Soldiers in Rollins’s unit called him “Ro-Roâ€.
In short tributes they wrote after his death, some called him brother.
Others mentioned how his sense of humor got them through hard times, along with his signature laugh.
It was loud, sudden, and booming - the kind that made other people laugh when they heard it.
Hanson: he stored his laughs up, and they came when he had truly done something he thought was just, slightly evil, slightly mischievous.
Kathy Hanson is a close friend of Rollins’s family, and another former teacher.
Hanson: always, you would hear it and could not help but laugh when he laughed, and you would just look at him and you’d be shaking your head, but you would be laughing.
Kathy says Rollins had the kind of charm that could get him out of trouble.
Take the night he and his buddies showed up for their senior prom on golf carts, smoking cigars and zipping around the town common…
Hanson: And in his boldness, so completely sure of himself, steps off of the golf cart, gives his hand to the girl, and they come up, and he’s got the stogie sticking out of the side of his mouth, and I just kinda looked at him, gave him that look, and he put it out, without any qualms, but it was just so him… that is him, looking so fine… so full of charm he would say.
Hanson agrees that the army helped tame Rollins a bit, and gave him a sense of purpose.
But she can’t help but think about where life could have taken him.
T7 16:34 he would’ve made a great member of this community. He would make a great husband, he would make a great father. And all of that should’ve happened.
But instead, she says his death has brought the war home for people in Newport.
In school, the loss has been sobering for students, not much younger than Rollins.
And all over town, flags are at half-staff, and people are weighing their views on the war as they feel its cost.
Hanson says she looks for comfort in the fact that Rollins chose to serve… that he turned down an offer to train as a recruiter so he could go to Iraq.
Soucy: He wanted to help, he felt that he was helping, I’ve had slight moments of why are they there, what are they doing, are they doing any good, did he lose his life for doing any good, and they did feel they were, he did feel he was.
After services in Newport, Justin Rollins is to be buried in Arlington Cemetary
Not long ago, he told his father he thought there was no greater honor.
For NHPR News, I’m SM.
