Local Mother Loses Son In Iraq

Tuesday, May 8th 2007, 7:57 am

By: News On 6

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- Army Spc. Joel Lewis, a gung-ho adventurer who put marriage to his sweetheart on hold to serve his country, was among six soldiers killed over the weekend in a roadside bomb blast in Iraq, his family said.

Lewis, 28, had ties to Sand Springs, where his mother and stepfather live. He was a member of the Stryker Brigade combat team at Fort Lewis, Washington, and had been in Iraq since February.

A freelance news photographer from Russia also was killed, and two more soldiers were wounded in Sunday's improvised explosive device attack, according to the Department of Defense.

It was the worst hit to date on the Stryker, a faster eight-wheeled armored troop carrier that is the mainstay of the Fort Lewis infantry brigades.

An al-Qaida front organization, the Islamic State of Iraq, issued a Web statement claiming responsibility for the attack.

Tuesday, family members remembered Lewis as a competitive "adrenaline junkie" who loved to skydive, tinker with computers and play chess and ice hockey.

Lewis stood tall at 6â€™5 and weighed 250 pounds, but had a disarming, hearty laugh that seemed to draw people toward him, recalled his mother, Gale Poindexter.

"I don't know what led him (into the Army), the adventure or the travel," Poindexter said. "He was always into that band of brothers type of thing.

"He kind of had no fear."

Chisel away the tough-guy exterior and you'd find the romantic who proposed to his fiancÃ©e in Washington only a few months after meeting her, family members said.

"He was like home," said Julie Smith, a bookkeeper who met Joel in September through an online dating service. "We got to know each other so easily."

Their first date was dinner at Olive Garden, then talking on the beach until after sundown. By December, Joel confessed to her on a car trip that he'd been looking at engagement rings. Then, in January, he just blurted out, 'will you marry me?' one day when they were at home, she recalled.

"He couldn't wait a second longer, he just had to know," said Smith, sobbing.

Plans to marry were put on hold until after he was scheduled to return in October.

Justin, Lewis' younger brother, said Joel was always the one trying the new adventures; the free spirit, who didn't want to be tied down to a desk job when he got out of the service; the one who taught him to play chess.

"He had so much life ahead of him," Justin Lewis said. "I was operating under 'this is not going to happen to me or my family."'

A memorial service for the soldiers is tentatively set for next Tuesday at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington.

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