 NewsDay -- BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A lieutenant colonel with the Army Reserves from western New York was killed by hostile fire while training Iraqi security forces near the Syrian border, military officials said Wednesday.
 Lt. Col. Terrence Crowe, 44, of Grand Island, was one of four U.S. soldiers killed in three separate attacks Tuesday. He is the fourth member of the Rochester-based 98th Division to die in Iraq.
"This is a sad day," said Tom Arida, Crowe's former boss at ABest, a North Tonawanda construction firm where Crowe worked as a carpenter until about three years ago.
Arida called Crowe "an artist" whose work was unique in the industry.
"He always wanted to make a difference, give people something more than they were asking for," an emotional Arida said. "He was that way here and it was the same in the military. He wanted to give something back."
Crowe, a father of two whose U.S. Army career spanned 17 years, including 10 years on active duty, left the construction company to become an assistant professor of military science at Canisius College in Buffalo, training ROTC cadets.
A colleague there remembered Crowe as a fine instructor, whose cadets performed above the national average.
"He was a very dynamic personality," said Lt. Col. Jim Bagwell, commander of the college's ROTC detachment, "very outspoken, very passionate about doing things in the best way possible."
Crowe attended the college's commissioning ceremony while on leave a few weeks ago, Bagwell said.
"He told a couple of war stories but the gist of it was he was impressed that people, knowing the danger they were in, would do what they had to do anyway," Bagwell said, "knowing they were going out into a risky situation."
Bagwell said Crowe's daughter is graduating high school this year, and his son is a couple years older.
A call to Crowe's sister was not immediately returned Wednesday.
A spokesman for the 98th Division could not say whether other soldiers had been killed or wounded in Tuesday's attack in the northern town of Tal Afar. Maj. James Lincoln said Crowe had been part of a Military Transition Team mentoring Iraqi troops.
"They were in Tal Afar looking for insurgents when the attack took place," Lincoln said. "He was there as a trainer, an adviser."
Three of the 98th Division's four casualties have died while training Iraqi security forces, Lincoln said. Besides Crowe, they are Staff Sgt. Christopher Dill, a 32-year-old Buffalo firefighter, who was fatally shot in April, and Sgt. 1st Class Paul Karpowich, 30, of Bridgeport, Pa., who died Dec. 21 in the mess tent suicide bombing in Mosul.
Sgt. Lawrence Roukey, 33, of Westbrook, Maine, was killed in an April explosion.
More than 1,000 troops from the unit are currently mobilized.
Crowe had been in Iraq since last October. Besides his children, he is survived by his parents.
At least 1,680 U.S. military members have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count. |
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