<!--Mark Scheer--><table width="234" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" background="http://static.cnhi.zope.net/flashpromo/niagaragazette/images/byline_234x60.jpg" height="60"><tr><td><div align="center"><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By Mark Scheer</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br /></font><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="mailto:mark.scheer@niagara-gazette.com">mark.scheer@niagara-gazette.com</a></font></div></td></tr></table>
In the course of any given week, you hear a lot of stuff.
There’s the usual sniping about who’s responsible for our problems.
“The city misspent the casino money.”
“No, the county did.”
“It was your mama’s uncle.”
“I’m taking my ball and going home.”
You know, that sort of thing.
There’s the press conferences and the meetings and the complaints about roads and decrepit houses and crooked politicians.
There’s the uneasy feeling that for all the blustering and yelling and screaming and pointing of fingers, so little seems to be getting done in terms of actually fixing the problems.
It’s enough to drive a man to drink, if he were into that sort of thing.
Occasionally, there’s a story like the one involving Mark Stets Jr.
These are the ones that give you perspective. They add a little more focus. They make you want to go home and hug everyone in your family.
Stets Jr., a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, died last week when a roadside bomb detonated outside Islamabad, Pakistan, killing him and six others.
I drew the assignment of talking to his aunt, Lewiston resident Mary Ann May.
We talked for 15 or 20 minutes or so about Mark, his life and his death.
Mary Ann talked a good deal about what a proud soldier he was and how there are so many other ones out there just like him - working hard in far off places with funny sounding names, trudging through sand, trying to convince people they didn’t know to trust them and to believe in American ideals.
One day they are preparing to celebrate with their new-found friends in the foreign country where they are stationed.
And then, in an instant, they are gone.
This is reality for military families.
They start everyday knowing that they could lose a son or a daughter, a father or a mother, a niece or a nephew.
I imagine it being a feeling of mixed emotions, a cross between intense pride and concern.
I don’t imagine it being easy.
Mark Stets Jr. was a soldier, a husband and a father of three.
He lost his life serving his country.
His death reminds us to remember others like him who are willing to do the same each day.
His story is important — the most important of the week, by a wide margin.
