Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Utah soldier is laid to rest

By Stephen
Speckman
Deseret Morning News

BLUFFDALE — After kneeling beside
his son's casket, Wolfgang Sieger held to his chest a folded American flag
and a Bronze Star certificate — and he was able to smile for a moment.

Scott G. Winterton, Deseret
Morning News

Family and friends look on as
the Camp Williams Honor Guard lowers the casket of Army Spc. Eric Rudolph
Sieger.

Army Spc. Eric R. Sieger, 18, of
Layton, was laid to rest at Camp Williams on Monday afternoon. He was
killed Feb. 1 in Iraq after the Bradley fighting vehicle he was in rolled
over. Sieger's father said that he is still waiting for information
about why the vehicle rolled.
During Sieger's
funeral, family members and friends talked about the highs and lows during
the soldier's life. But Wolfgang Sieger was particularly struck by the
burial with full military honors.
"This really is
as high as you can get," he said, as he looked down at the flag and
certificate in his arms. But Sieger, an immigrant from Austria who became
a U.S. citizen, also acknowledged, "Freedom comes at a price."

Eric became a Sieger at the age of 10, when Wolfgang and
Krista Sieger adopted the boy and his three siblings into a family that
included eight of their own offspring and four other adopted
children.
"They have done everything they've done
with much love," said Kevin Hatch, a bishop with The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Bishop Hatch
remembered a troubled boy who, when he was adopted, never smiled much.
Hatch and others at the funeral described how Sieger changed over the
years and became a "gentle" and loving young man.

"Bless his heart, he did well," Bishop Hatch said. "He began to
smile."
Army Gen. Walter L. Davis, the military
official who presided over the service, called Sieger loyal and
respectful. "Unless we've lost one of our own, it's impossible to
know what this family is going through right now," he told about 100
people at the service.
As of Monday, 3,382
coalition forces have died in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, according
to http://www.icasualties.org/. Out of that number, 3,126
U.S. troops have died in Iraq.

Gov. Jon M. Huntsman
Jr. paid tribute to Sieger and his family, which includes three siblings
currently in the military and a brother who served four years in the Air
Force. "This is a family with a commitment to service, and we honor that,"
Huntsman said.
The governor said that Eric
Sieger's service should be remembered as a benefit to a "highly
misunderstood" part of the world.
Krista Sieger
spoke briefly to those gathered at the Camp Williams chapel about e-mails
that she had shared with her son and how he feared not making it home
alive to celebrate his 19th birthday, which would have been March
9.
He ended at least one e-mail, "'I love you
mom,"' she said. Looking at his coffin inside the chapel, she replied, "I
love you, too."
Before meeting his son at the
grave site a few hundred yards from the chapel, Sieger's father said,
"There were many great times we had together," including walking to school
and to the park.
"They were happy times," Sieger
said. "I'm grateful to have had you as a son. ... We didn't have much
time, but it was a good time. ... This is not a farewell, this is a 'See
you later."'

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