 Tuscaloosa
News -- Army Staff Sgt. William J. Brooks mailed a Mother's Day card early
so it would reach his mother in Birmingham by Sunday. She received it, but it
will be his last message home.
 The 30-year-old soldier died
Tuesday in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq while conducting a security mission
in Baghdad. The Defense Department announced his death Friday.
Linda
Brooks said her only son wrote in the Mother's Day card that he wanted to "make
it back home to see everyone."
It continued: "Tell everyone I love them
especially my grandmothers and you always. Love you forever, your
son."
Services are set for noon Friday at Antioch Baptist Church .
Besides his mother, Brooks is survived by a wife, Roxanne, and daughters Ayana,
11, and Aaryan, 5.
His mother sat in her living room where a framed military portrait of her son
hangs on the wall behind her. "It really hasn't set in yet until I see my child
one more time," Linda Brooks told The Birmingham News for a story
Sunday.
Brooks a 1992 Jackson Olin High School graduate, was a member of
the 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Division Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division based in
Fort Stewart Ga.
Brooks joined the Army eight years ago and had been to
Bosnia and Korea before going to Iraq.
"He joined the military to take
care of his daughter," Linda Brooks said. "I think he was doing an honorable
thing."
Brooks last spoke to her son April 28 when he asked for an update
on the rest of the family. Linda Brooks said her son knew of the danger
surrounding him but maintained a positive forecast for his future.
"He
said, `I read my Bible and I stay prayed up and if something happens to me it's
just my time to go,'" she recalled. "I guess God had another mission for
him."
Family friend Warren Holsey had known William Brooks since the
family lived in the Pratt City neighborhood across the street from his mother's
house. Holsey was a few years older than Brooks and played with his
uncle.
"I remember him vividly as a little kid playing around in the yard
making everyone laugh," Holsey said. "When he left to join the service and he
came back, he was very serious and he was a man."
Holsey said Brooks'
death made the war in Iraq and the images on television real to him. Impact of
war had finally arrived and traveled down his narrow Birmingham
street.
As an adult he was Staff Sgt. William Brooks. But to his mother
he was still Jerome, the name friends and family called him at
home.
While he was a serious military man, Linda Brooks said her son
retained his fun-loving side developed in childhood. He never gave up playing
the drums, something he learned in high school, and liked to watch silly sitcoms
like "Gilligan's Island." |
