Two weeks and three days later, with his shrapnel wounds healed, Cooper was back on duty when another bomb went off.

This time, though, the bomb did more than leave him bleeding. This time the bomb killed him.

Cooper, 19, died Friday in Baghdad, the Pentagon announced Monday. He and Pvt. Darren A. Deblanc, 20, of Evansville, Ind., were killed when a bomb exploded near where they were walking on patrol.

Only a few weeks earlier, "he got hit with a little shrapnel, and he got right back up and went back at his job," said Cooper's father, Charles S. Cooper, 48, of Jamestown. "I'm so proud of him."

Cooper is the 18th Western New York soldier to die in Iraq or Afghanistan since the fall of 2001.

The young soldier's father last spoke with him on the phone a week ago, and in an earlier conversation, his son described his meeting with Rumsfeld.

"He called up and said: "Guess who I met?' " the elder Cooper said.

"I said: "President Bush?' and he said no. I went through a couple other names, and then he said: "Donald Rumsfeld.' I was just ever so proud about that."

Rumsfeld visited Iraq on April 12, and amid his meetings with Iraqi officials, he awarded Purple Hearts to 10 soldiers.

Cooper received the medal because he was wounded in a bombing in March, an Army spokesman said.

In the account he gave his brother David, 22, Cooper said he was walking on patrol when a bomb went off and blew him back about 20 feet, leaving shrapnel wounds in his face and his arm.

The wounds were not life-threatening, though, so Cooper returned quickly to duty.

The incident changed his outlook, said his brother Patrick, 20. Once eager to leave his hometown, "he just said he wanted to walk the safe streets of Jamestown again," Patrick Cooper said.

Cooper's tour of duty in Iraq was scheduled to end in a few weeks.

But Friday, "he was at the wrong place at the wrong time," David Cooper said.

The Cooper family found that out Friday evening, when Cooper's father found two police officers and a man wearing a green beret on his front porch.

"It wasn't right," Cooper's father said. "He always said that if a guy with a green beret came by, it would be bad."

In addition to his father and brothers, Cooper is survived by his mother, Sherry Weaver of Jamestown; another brother, Steven; and two sisters, Jennifer and Danielle.

Charles was the youngest of the six siblings, and his father remembers happy moments hunting and fishing with his son.

"Whatever I did, they did," Cooper's father said.

But once Cooper graduated from Jamestown High School last year, he decided to join the Army.

"He just wanted to make a better life for himself," Patrick Cooper said.

Cooper wanted to join the infantry, and was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division's Second Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, Second Combat Team.

"He went straight through and didn't give up no matter what," David Cooper said. "He became a man real quick."