MATTOON, IL, USA U.S. Army SGT, BATTERY B, 2D BATTALION, 122D FIELD ARTILLERY, ROBBINS, IL KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN 02/24/2009
My son Sergeant Scott B. Stream was born in Clinton, Iowa March 4th 1969. Scott was curious, articulate and content in his own skin. He was an intellectual. He loved art, music, debating, role playing games and many other things but most of all he loved to read and to write. I think he would have been devastated to be unable to continue to learn and grow in knowledge. Scott was fiercely patriotic and loved God, his family and the USA.
Scott was married to a wonderful woman Rasa. He has two daughters Megan and Laura. Both are beautiful girls who seem to share his love of the arts and books. They also share his handsome looks and when I look at their eyes , I can see my son again. He was quite content to ride bikes or have a tea party and play barbies.
Scott has two siblings named Shawn and Shannon. They were all close in age and Scott was the middle child. He is so very missed by both his brother and sister. The children loved the competition of sports and who knew more about any given topic.
Sherm and I think of our boy every day. But we have made a conscious effort to remember him with joy and we know that it is better to have bore the devastation of loosing Scott rather than not to have known him at all. He was a good man. He was a kind man and I think Scott will be remembered by others in his own words. He wrote this on New Years Eve just short of two months before he was KIA on 2/24/09
“A strange thing…When I think about what surrounds me, the institutional corruption, the random violence, the fear and desperation. I feel the reasons why I am here more and more sharply. As we grow in our soldiers skills, surviving by finding the hidden dangers, seeing the secret motives and the shifting politics… we grow a set of skills that is unique and powerful in this situation. We also see what you cannot see in the States, you are surrounded by the love of Christ and faith in freedom and humanity, like a fish you think water is ‘a puff of air’ because it is always there, you do not notice it… we who are out of the water look back and see the world we love surrounded by enemies, poison and envy that wants to fall on you like a storm of ruin.
We who joined with vague notions of protecting our country see how desperate the peril, how hungry the enemy and how frail the security we have is. So the more I love you all the more I feel I must keep fighting for you. The more I love and long for home the more right I feel here on the front line standing between you and the seething madness that wants to suck the life and love out of our land.
Does that mean I cannot go home? I hope not, because I want this just to be the postponement of the joy of life, not the sacrifice of mine. If it costs me my life to protect our land and people then that is a small thing, I just hope that fate lets me return to the promised land and remind people just how great our land is.
War is a young mans game, and I am getting an old mans head… it is a strange thing. I just hope that I am not changed so that I cannot take joy in the land inside the wire when I make it home. I want to be with you all again and let my gun sit in the rack and float on my back in a tube down a lazy river…”
Comments