Quote:

June 20, 2005

Kids get back Father's Day card after soldier dies

The Associated Press

MOSS POINT — Spc. Terrance Lee's young sons got a solemn reminder that Father's Day will never again be the same.

A Father's Day card that Terrance Jr., 5, and Ramone, 3, mailed to the Mississippi Army National Guard soldier before his death was returned from Iraq on Friday.

"His card came back just yesterday that the kids sent," the children's grandmother, Dinah Lee, said Saturday afternoon.

Ramone initially was excited, thinking his dad had sent him a birthday card, she said.

When his grandmother explained it was the Father's Day card they sent their dad, Ramone clutched the envelop close to his heart.

Then T.J. wanted the card, she said.

The compromise: they each took turns holding the card.

"That went on until they went to bed," Dinah Lee said.

Terrance Lee was killed by a bomb outside of Amiriyah, some 25 miles west of Baghdad, while on patrol the morning of June 11. Sgt. Larry R. Arnold Sr., 46, of Carrier also was killed in the same attack.

Both soldiers were part of Company B 150th Combat Engineer Battalion of Lucedale and deployed to Iraq with the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Brigade Combat Team, which is made up of about 3,500 Mississippians and other National Guard soldiers from several states.

At least a dozen 155th soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq since the brigade deployed in January.

Lee was a 1999 graduate of Moss Point High School and joined the Guard in 2002.

Lee's wife, Stephanie, is expecting their first daughter in September.

The couple met at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, where they both worked. Terrance Lee was a first class welder and she is a pipe fitter.

"He loved to talk. He loved to laugh. He didn't meet any strangers," Stephanie Lee has said. "He lived to the fullest. He didn't let anything bother him."


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