Lance S. Sage

Thursday, December 29 2005 @ 11:01 PM EST

www.newsday.com -- Spc. Lance S. Sage, an only son from Lakeview who dreamed that the Army would take him to far-off places, was killed in Baghdad Tuesday when an improvised explosive device detonated while he was on patrol, the Department of Defense reported Wednesday.

Sage, 26, of the Fourth Infantry Division based in Fort Hood, Texas, had been in Iraq for only a month, said his mother, Alice F. Jones, 67. She last heard from him on Thanksgiving, four days before he deployed.



Sage is the 16th Long Islander to be killed in Iraq since the war began. The Department of Defense released few details of Sage's death Wednesday, saying only that he and Pvt. Joshua M. Morberg, 20, of Sparks, Nev., had dismounted from their patrol when an improvised explosive device detonated and killed them.

An Army spokesman did not provide additional information, but Jones said that officers told her Sage had been raiding a building when the device was either thrown or detonated remotely.

A shy man despite his 6-foot-9 frame, Sage surprised family and friends when he announced three years ago that he wanted to join the Army. He was 23 and making a living fixing and upgrading computers. "Guys that you see in the Army are very outgoing, but this is what he wanted to do," said Annie Cherry, a family friend who shares her house with Jones. "He wanted to make a life."

As a boy growing up in Hempstead, Sage was curious about other places. When he was little, Jones would take him on road trips to nearby cities. "We'd just get on a bus, and take a hotel room," she recalled. Atlantic City, Philadelphia -- Sage loved it all. For some reason, the little boy always wanted to see Buffalo. "Maybe he thought they really had buffaloes," Jones surmised.

Sage was Jones' only son, and the two were inseparable when he was a child, she said. Yesterday, as she rocked gently in an armchair, it was clear the news hadn't fully dawned on her. She spoke in a dry, calm voice.

As a teenager, Sage didn't do well in local schools, so Jones sent him upstate to Lincoln Hall, an all-boys school for kids with discipline problems. He thrived in the new atmosphere, she said, and graduated in 1997. After high school, Sage took computer classes.

"He always liked to take things apart and put them back together," Jones said. One time, he took apart her radio and hid it under her bed when he realized he couldn't put it back together again, she recalled with a laugh.

Sage was a big guy -- in addition to his height, he weighed more than 300 pounds -- so big, in fact, that when he first decided to join the Army, he didn't qualify because his neck wouldn't fit in standard-issue Army shirts, Cherry said. So before enlisting, Sage spent several weeks jogging, working out on an exercise machine and limiting his diet. When he had lost 50 pounds, he made the cut.

He trained in Kentucky and was assigned to the Fourth Infantry Division in Fort Hood, Jones said. In the Army, he made plenty of friends and enjoyed the seriousness of the task before him. "We have to be on point," he would tell his mother proudly.

Sage knew that he might get sent to Iraq, and he was ready for it. "We knew he was going sooner or later," Jones said. "And that's what he wanted to do."

"Don't worry. If that's what it's going to be, that's what's going to be," he would tell Jones and Cherry of the possibility of getting killed.

Jones got the news Tuesday night, just after she had returned home from her job as an assistant to an elderly couple. Around the same time, she said, officers were delivering the news at the Brooklyn home of his father, Calvin Sage. He could not be reached for comment.

When she saw the officers at her door, she knew, she said. Cherry knew, too, because they had called on Jones earlier in the day, while she was still at work. "When you have children who are away and you see somebody standing there, they're either dead or injured," Jones said. "I don't know why I felt this, but I knew he was dead."

5 comments

http://iraq.pigstye.net/article.php/SageLance