Monday, November 14 2005 @ 12:36 AM MST
Contributed by: River97
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 www.gazette.com -- It may have been the confidence that Cpl. Adam White always exuded.
Even when he was in a hospital bed, unable to speak or move for half a year, his wife and family never thought White would lose his battle with encephalitis, a disease the Fort Carson soldier contracted in Iraq. But that hope turned to tears when the 24-year-old died on June 18, 2004.
"He was just a lovely person," said his wife, Dorit, of Colorado Springs.
Doctors still don't know why White got sick and still can't explain why he never got better. Theories range from insect-carried diseases to an adverse reaction to a flu shot.
He's the 46th Fort Carson soldier whose death is attribut- ed to service in Iraq.
White planned a surprise Christmas visit home to see his bride. But Dec. 7, after eight months in Iraq, he awoke unable to control the left side of his body.
Doctors found swelling in White's brain. The soldier came home from Iraq paralyzed.
This was the same 6-foot-4-inch man who met Dorit on the dance floor of a club during country-music night just over a year earlier. When White arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, his big smile and quick wit were gone.
He had been a smart child, and more than a little mischievous. Raised in a Marine Corps family, White tricked everyone on his fifth birthday.
"We had told him that we couldn't afford a big party," his mother, Vicki White, said. "Just a couple of presents and cake, that's it. So he went around and invited everyone he knew in the neighborhood."
White got his big birthday, and the impromptu party was a sign of things to come for the boy who liked to go his own way.
He was one of those kids who always seemed too smart for school. Learning rudimentary math and basic English left him bored.
So White went to an alternative high school in San Diego. The alternative education wasn't an excuse to slide. White finished his four-year education in three years and was the valedictorian of his class.
It may have been the fact that he was born on the Fourth of July, or it could have been the family's military heritage, but a few days before graduation White packed up and headed for basic training.
In the Army, White was brilliant if big-mouthed. A gunner in air-defense artillery, he was the best shot in the brigade, an honor won at the Army's National Training Center in California. He wasn't afraid of Iraq. "He believed in what he was doing," Dorit said.
When she met White, Dorit already had a daughter, Callista. But he was ready to be a dad, transforming from nightclubbing cowboy to homebody. They wed a few weeks before he shipped out.
They planned on a honeymoon and children later. "He wanted a baby," Dorit said through tears. In Iraq, White helped defend a base in Tikrit.
He'd made sergeant but was busted back to corporal after speaking his mind one too many times, his wife said. Through it all he remained optimistic, making big postwar plans.
"He always said he'd come back," Dorit said.
But he came back unable to move or talk. Then, in February he seemed to come around, speaking a little bit.
White even ordered Valentine's Day flowers for his wife.
After a couple of weeks, he slipped away again, his personality squelched by the swelling inside his head.
His family doesn't want people to remember White as the man in a hospital bed. To them, he's still the tender husband, fun-loving cowboy and mischievous 5-year-old. |
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