In my hometown, most visitors driving down Main Street don't notice the granite statue at the front of the cemetery.
It honors Oliver Brown, who died three years ago on a routine security patrol near Ramadi, Iraq. An "improvised explosive device" hit his vehicle and killed the five soldiers inside, the military said.
Growing up, I remember watching Brown and his friend, Brandon Johnson, play baseball on the local Little League fields. Before his death, Brown asked his mother to send his baseball mitt so he could play catch in his free time again with Johnson, who enlisted in the same unit.
At a memorial service, a former coach remembered Brown being ready to play and saying, "Put me in, Coach. I'm ready to play center field."
On the day of his death, someone felt sick, and Brown volunteered to go on the mission. The baseball mitt arrived in Iraq shortly after his death.
This week, the American death toll in Iraq reached 4,000 people, including 187 soldiers from Pennsylvania. If every soldier's coffin were laid head-to-toe, they would stretch for five miles.
I didn't know Brown well, but my father was his fourth grade teacher. Years later, during middle school art class, Brown told me that my dad gave him a detention once.
"And then afterwards, he smiled," Brown said.
Less than two years after Brown and I received our diplomas, the community packed into the high school auditorium for his memorial service. The Army National Guard draped an American flag over his casket, and several hundred people watched the procession travel down Main Street, past his mother's house.
Brown was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the Combat Infantry Badge for his service, and the Pennsylvania legislature passed a resolution that expressed gratitude for the time he spent in Iraq.
On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, President Bush swore that we're on track to win the war and promised the outcome "will merit the sacrifice." Presidential candidate John McCain supports troops staying for another 100 years if the Iraqis don't make political process.
At the rate we're going, in another 100 years, 76,000 more fathers, brothers, cousins and sons will die in Iraq. To place this number in context, remember that 58,000 U.S. servicemen were killed in Vietnam and 37,000 died in Korea.
Johnson's family lives down the street from my parents. When I went home for Christmas, I noticed ribbons and a sign on their porch that said "Bring our troops home."
The local newspaper said that Johnson and the rest of Brown's unit were preparing to go back to Iraq, and with the article, they ran a photo of Johnson holding his son who is less than a year old.
The son's name: Oliver Brad.
