ONE OF OUR OWN

An Army officer from Kent was killed Saturday in Baghdad, the Department of Defense announced.

Second Lt. Benjamin J. Colgan died when he was responding to a rocket-propelled grenade attack. An improvised bomb killed him. Colgan was assigned to the Second Battalion, Third Field Artillery Regiment, First Armored Division in Giessen, Germany.

Family members in Kent said he was married. He and his wife had two small children and were expecting a third child later this year.

UPDATE: A friend of mine, whom I know only by way of the Internet and the telephone wrote to tell me Ben was a friend of his. According to Mike "he was a great guy--loved and respected by everyone around him."

The Colgans tied a yellow ribbon around the maple tree in their front yard and intended to take it down once their son Ben returned safely from Iraq.

But yesterday, Joe and Pat Colgan tied a black ribbon of mourning on the tree -- the same maple they planted 30 years ago to mark the birth of their fourth child.

Their son, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, was killed in Baghdad on Saturday by a remotely triggered bomb, the military told his family...

Colgan fell in love with the service, his family said, and excelled, first as a medic, then as a member of the Special Forces, and later as a member of the Army's elite Delta Force.

The reason he excelled, his uncle Paul remembered, pointing to his head, is "because it's all up here. He always used to say, 'It doesn't matter what shoes you have.' "

Read it all here.