Seattle Post Intelligencer -- In a January meeting at Fort Lewis, a month after the deadliest attack upon Stryker Brigade soldiers in Iraq claimed six of them in a suicide bombing, 24-year-old 1st Lt. Aaron Seesan stood up and volunteered to help replace the dead.

Seesan reasoned that the only other person of his rank who might go had a wife and kids, Seesan's mother recalled last night. Also, his going provided a chance to rejoin a unit he belonged to until shortly before it was deployed to Iraq last October.

"I had an opportunity to visit Aaron at Fort Lewis in January before he left for Iraq," his mother, Chiquita, said from the family's home in Massillon, Ohio, yesterday. "I think Aaron tried to prepare me."

Her son was adamant that they not dwell on packing his belongings but enjoy their time together, take in such sites as the Seattle Art Museum and just talk.

During a drive to see the Hoh rain forest, "we talked about his last will and testament, and he wanted my input. It was a very casual conversation. He gave me a copy before I left to go home. I put it in the cupboard here and decided I was never going to look at it again," the soldier's mother said.

Last Sunday, she retrieved it. An Army chaplain arrived at the family's home to tell her and her husband, Thomas, that their son was among the three Stryker soldiers killed in Iraq early Sunday.

It was one of the deadliest days the 4,000-member brigade from Fort Lewis has experienced since the December suicide bombing in a mess hall. Altogether, 95 U.S. military personnel with ties to Washington who have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. Nearly 60 of the dead were from Fort Lewis.

Seesan and Spc. Tyler Creamean both died in the same roadside bomb attack while riding in a vehicle. Both were members of the brigade's 73rd Engineer Company.

Sgt. Benjamin C. Morton, 24, of Wright, Kan., a member of the brigade's 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, died in a separate incident in Mosul. He was shot and killed during a house-to-house search.

Creamean was killed immediately in the explosion. Seesan, burned over 80 percent of his body, clung to life as he was airlifted to Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany.

"We were notified almost right away after he was injured; it was very urgent in the voice" of the soldier making the call to them from Iraq, Seesan's mother said.

The family learned from Army officials that Seesan was leading his men when an incendiary bomb struck the fuel tank of their vehicle -- they didn't know what kind of vehicle it was -- and exploded.

"We know that when his men got to him he was conscious. He was awake, instructing his men how to take care of the other wounded soldiers and continued to direct them even though he was severely injured," Chiquita Seesan said.

"He was still awake when they left Iraq to fly him to Germany. Even though over 80 percent of his body was burned, the problem was what he inhaled. It had damaged his lungs," she said. "They tried for hours to save him, and finally his heart stopped."

In addition to Chiquita Seesan and her husband, Thomas, who is superintendent of the Stark County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, Seesan is survived by a brother, Michael, 28; two sisters, Rachel, 20, and Rebekah, 12; and a sister-in-law, Natalie.

Seesan graduated in 2003 from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., to which he won a congressional appointment.

High school included four years of football, track, speech and drama. Seesan was an altar boy and an Eagle Scout. He excelled at the academy, earning its highest honors for service as well as leadership and ethics.

Seesan's mom said her son developed a sudden interest in the Army and World War II history in elementary school. "He literally was playing with dinosaurs one day and the next day had little Army soldiers in his sandbox."

Seesan earned a degree in marine engineering systems and a U.S. Coast Guard merchant marine license upon graduation. Since academy graduates can choose which branch of the service they'd like to enter and an internship at Fort Lewis had impressed her son, he became the one in his class of 201 students to don Army green.

Of the private commissioning ceremony after Seesan's graduation, his mother recalled, "He was an Army of one that day." Seesan became a combat engineer.

Seesan's mother considers it a blessing that her son reached the family at home by phone on Saturday, two hours before heading out on the mission during which he died.

"He was able to talk to almost all the family, teasing and joking with his sisters," she said. "It was an opportunity to tell him again that I loved him, and that he loved me."

Of the will she swore she never would remove from the cupboard, Chiquita Seesan said, "We can now do what he wanted. His memory will live on for a long time."