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Mother of soldier killed in Iraq collapses, dies

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TUCSON, Arizona (AP)


'Her grief was so intense,' hospital worker says -- A 45-year-old woman collapsed and died days after learning her son had been killed in Iraq, and just hours after seeing his body.

Results of an autopsy were not immediately released, but friends of Karen Unruh-Wahrer said she couldn't stop crying over losing her 25-year-old son, Army Spc. Robert Oliver Unruh, who was killed by enemy fire near Baghdad on September 25.

"Her grief was so intense -- it seemed it could have harmed her, could have caused a heart attack. Her husband described it as a broken heart," said Cheryl Hamilton, manager of respiratory care services at University Medical Center, where Unruh-Wahrer worked as a respiratory therapist.

Unruh, a combat engineer, had been in Iraq less than a month when he was shot during an attack on his unit.

Several days after learning of his death, his mother had gone to the hospital complaining of chest pains, Hamilton said. She was feeling better the next day but saw her son's body Saturday morning and collapsed that night in her kitchen.

Her husband, Dennis Wahrer -- also a respiratory therapist -- and other family members performed CPR but Unruh-Wahrer was pronounced dead that night.

Autopsy results won't be released until relatives are notified, said Dr. Bruce Parks, Pima County chief medical examiner. There was no immediate response to a call to his office before business hours Tuesday.

Robert Unruh will be buried Friday at the Southern Arizona Veterans' Memorial Cemetery. His mother's body will accompany her son's in the procession to the cemetery.



Just a sad story
 
Read this somewhere else. Truly horrible. :(

A lot of people in the U.S. aren't tuning into the fact that we have young Americans dying everyday there, with no realistic plan in place for completing Operation Iraqi Freedom and ensuring that their hardship and service will pay off.

These are teenagers and early twenty-somethings. Some wanted to be able to go to college and make a better life for themselves, and others wanted to be available for their own countrymen as National Guardsmen. Others felt compelled to enlist to serve their country as a matter of fact. I'd wager very, very few of them actually ever fathomed they'd be put in a place so hostile with their leadership so completely clueless on how to finish the job they started when they invaded.

It's tragic. Especially the part about the way that it beats down the lower classes in our society, whose sons and daughters make up a majority of the enlisted population so that they can afford higher education, without which they are doomed to remain in lower paying jobs and a lower quality of life.

I'd be interested to know if this son went to the military so that he could pay his way through school. I'd love to know if his death and the death of his heartbroken mother, are because a certain, extremely selfish and ignorant subset of our population can't fucking deal with the fact that college education is, at the same time, almost mandatory for a reasonable quality of life while being at the same time unaffordable to a large swath of the population, and that as a result the lower classes have zero fucking class mobility.

Edit: Changed it from 'We as Americans' to 'a certain, extremely selfish and ignorant subset of our population'. I understand it. A lot of people I know understand it. So it's not America as much as it is a set of the american populace.
 

Flynn

Member
This is the reality of war.

I wish people wouldn't forget these tragedies during times of peace.

Maybe they'd be less prone to support any and every military action.
 
Fragamemnon said:
I'd be interested to know if this son went to the military so that he could pay his way through school. I'd love to know if his death and the death of his heartbroken mother, are because a certain, extremely selfish and ignorant subset of our population can't fucking deal with the fact that college education is, at the same time, almost mandatory for a reasonable quality of life while being at the same time unaffordable to a large swath of the population, and that as a result the lower classes have zero fucking class mobility.

Probably not it seems like his parents were solidly middle class. But, I will say this some people have other reasons for joining the military that aren't financial or patroitic.
 
Probably not it seems like his parents were solidly middle class. But, I will say this some people have other reasons for joining the military that aren't financial or patroitic.

Oh definitely. I wanted to go into the Army Corps of Engineers from the time I was 11 and continue a family tradition of service (and didn't because my father didn't want me joining the military), and I've met a lot of people that enlist for non-financial reasons. It wasn't as much about serving the country or getting a free ride through college as honoring my father's service and carrying on that legacy.

Sounds weird, but I bet it's more common than people would think.
 
Fragamemnon said:
Oh definitely. I wanted to go into the Army Corps of Engineers from the time I was 11 and continue a family tradition of service (and didn't because my father didn't want me joining the military), and I've met a lot of people that enlist for non-financial reasons. It wasn't as much about serving the country or getting a free ride through college as honoring my father's service and carrying on that legacy.

Sounds weird, but I bet it's more common than people would think.


No, I am in the same boat. I wanted to join the Navy like my Dad but, he like your father was adamant about my brother and I not joining the military.
 

Flynn

Member
My dad fought in the Cuban revolution and Vietnam, when I was a kid he said he'd do anything within his power to keep me from going to war -- that really stuck with me.
 

ShadowRed

Banned
Flynn said:
My dad fought in the Cuban revolution and Vietnam, when I was a kid he said he'd do anything within his power to keep me from going to war -- that really stuck with me.





Hey my Dad was in Vietnam and he came out and said in a serirous manner that if I joined the military he would kill me before I shipped out. He's way fucking anti military. Used to tell me and my brothers all about the fucked up shit that went down in the military, and not just the shit with fighting the enemy but all the racism and shit that was going down. He told me not to believe all the shit you hear about the military being ahead of the times in regards to race relations, it's more racist than the general society.
 
ShadowRed-

My dad was in Vietnam, though I don't think he ever saw combat action there. He never talks about it-I should bring it up sometime now that I'm older.

I wonder if some of the experiences of being in the miltary during Vietnam were the reason he forbade me from service. He was a pretty decent rank officer when he retired, too.
 

Tazznum1

Member
You haven't lived until you had sex with a man that served in Vietnam.
:D


Where the f*ck that came from? I have no idea, but it was funny.




























and true.
 

ShadowRed

Banned
Fragamemnon said:
ShadowRed-

My dad was in Vietnam, though I don't think he ever saw combat action there. He never talks about it-I should bring it up sometime now that I'm older.

I wonder if some of the experiences of being in the miltary during Vietnam were the reason he forbade me from service. He was a pretty decent rank officer when he retired, too.





My Dad didn't really talk about it unless we were at family reunions. I have 4 other uncles and all of them but the youngest went. They used to talk about all the shit that happened and all the shit they saw. That is when he said to the entire family that if any of us his kids came home with enlistment papers he would "take us out" before he let us get fucked up in the military. Anyhow the one uncle who didn't go is a fucking clown. He'd show up with a different white chick ever reunion, driving a yellow, green or some other loud ass color car. He was always starting shit at the reunions. I guess this one particular year he either had drank too much or my old man and the other 3 brothers had had enough of him. Every year when they would talk about their war stories my "little" Uncle as we called him used to chim in with, "Ya'll some fools I wouldn't have gone. They couldn't have made me do nothing." Like I said this year my old man and brothers wasn't having it and jumped the fuck out of him. Started literally beating the shit out of him. This wasn't like a little scuffle they were throwing down like you would expect strangers on the street. My Mom, Big Mooma and all the Aunts where screaming and hollering. Shit me and all the kids were cheering them on. Big Daddy was like, "Let'em fight leave'em alone." To my "little" Uncles credit he stood tall and didn't run and tried to fight back even as they were stomping his ass into the ground. Finally my Grandmother broke it up. About an hour later they are all sitting playing dominoes together. That had to have been the best family reunion ever.
 
ShadowRed said:
Hey my Dad was in Vietnam and he came out and said in a serirous manner that if I joined the military he would kill me before I shipped out. He's way fucking anti military. Used to tell me and my brothers all about the fucked up shit that went down in the military, and not just the shit with fighting the enemy but all the racism and shit that was going down. He told me not to believe all the shit you hear about the military being ahead of the times in regards to race relations, it's more racist than the general society.


I heard basically the same thing. But, my I think my Dad is more like he mortgaged his life for a better future for his children and we didn't and shouldn't make the same choices because we don't have to.
 
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