Times-Picayune -- On Monday, two days after Sgt. Lee Godbolt of New Orleans was killed in Iraq, a hand-addressed lavender envelope arrived for his aunt Mae Hagan. It held the birthday card Godbolt, 23, had picked out and mailed weeks earlier. The card read, "To a Special Aunt," and on the back of the envelope, the young sergeant added this message: "C U Soon."

Godbolt, a Lower 9th Ward resident, was one of two Army National Guard members from Louisiana who died Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded during their patrol in Baghdad, the U.S. Department of Defense said Monday. The other, Sgt. Isiah Sinclair, 31, of Natchitoches, brings the total dead from Louisiana to 38, including 19 members of the National Guard.

 Godbolt's aunt, whom he called Fay, pressed the lavender envelope to her heart Monday as she sat surrounded by relatives outside her mother-in-law's house, next door to her home. As she and her sister Martha Franklin spoke about their nephew, a Lawless High School graduate who had attended Southern University at New Orleans, their cell phones rang repeatedly and friends came by to convey their sympathy.

Near Hagan's mailbox on the front of her frame house hangs a red, white and blue sign, decorated with a yellow ribbon, that reads: "God Bless Our Troops. We Love You Lee." She and her husband, Kevin, had put it up when Godbolt was deployed to Iraq in October for what was to be a yearlong hitch.

The sisters said they had been anxious about their nephew from the moment he left home. "I was riding on his back, saying, 'Lee, please don't go,' " Hagan said. "He said, 'Fay, I'm going to be all right.' "

Her sister scowled as she sipped a Diet Coke. "I haven't liked this war from day one," Franklin said. "I've seen so many reports on TV. When you hear that someone has been killed in Iraq, it never dawns on you that it's going to be someone you know."

"I was hoping it was a bad dream," said Joyce Hagan, Mae Hagan's mother-in-law. "I just couldn't believe it."

Godbolt's mother, Denise Godbolt, got the news Saturday morning about 5:30 at her home on Egania Street.

"His mother did some crying," Kevin Hagan said. "Lord, she did some crying."

Godbolt was in seclusion Monday afternoon and declined to be interviewed, but in a tearful television interview during the weekend, she said her son had entered the military as a step toward a better future. He had been in the Guard for three years, and was scheduled to return from Iraq in October.

Lee Godbolt is the second Lawless High School graduate to die in Iraq in the past two months.

For Mae Hagan, Godbolt's death was especially tough because she is a housekeeper at Jackson Barracks, where she often visited with her nephew when he was training as part of the Army National Guard. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion of the 141st Field Artillery Regiment.

"When I go back to the barracks, I'm going to be looking for him," Hagan said. "It's going to be hard knowing he's not going to be around anymore."

Sinclair's relatives said Monday they would release a statement though the National Guard. His father, Langston Sinclair Sr. of Crowley, was wounded twice in Vietnam; he died two years ago, at the age of 55, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Alexandria. Isiah Sinclair was in the 1st Battalion, 156th Armored Regiment, based in Shreveport.

Funeral arrangements for Godbolt, which are being handled by Rhodes Funeral Home, are incomplete.

As Godbolt's relatives sat in Joyce Hagan's front yard, they remembered him as a well-behaved, fun-loving young man who liked basketball and rap music and wanted to succeed.

Kevin Hagan recalled pictures Godbolt had sent of Iraqi children to whom he had given some of his rations because they didn't have enough to eat. Hagan somberly said he was proud of his nephew.

"He put his life on the line for his country," Hagan said. "He died for a cause. Let's hope that the way he lived will set an example for others."