By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

AUBURN – For Sgt. 1st Class Shawn Dostie, it was a quiet goodbye.

Country songs played low. Family photos silently appeared upon a projected screen. And outside, five people carried flags, greeting the 75 family and friends who attended Tuesday’s memorial service.

“He wouldn’t have wanted anything loud,” his wife, Stephanie, said later. “This is what Shawn would have liked.”

In a way, it was a last goodbye.

Dostie was killed Dec. 30 by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. Soldiers there in Iraq, at his home post in Kentucky and at Arlington National Cemetery have all remembered the 32-year-old Lewiston native.

“He had a lot of family and friends here,” Stephanie said Tuesday at the Fortin Group Funeral Home in Auburn.

They wanted to remember him, too.

The Rev. Richard Cullen read letters from Stephanie, Shawn’s parents, Robert and Delaine Fugere, and his sister, Crystal Desrossiers.

“There will be a hole in our lives, an empty space that won’t be filled,” wrote Shawn’s sister.

His uncle Joey Campbell wrote even wrote a poem, praising Shawn as a hero.

After his death, the young soldier was honored with several of the Army’s most prestigious awards, including the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.

“The only hero he wanted to be was a hero to his family,” Campbell said.