By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

Even before the soldiers knocked on her door, Stephanie Dostie knew her husband had died.

An opening in the curtains of her Fort Campbell, Ky., home revealed the soldiers’ shined shoes and the cuffs of their dress uniforms.

“I knew right then,” she said. “They didn’t have to say anything.”

The Lewiston man she’d met years earlier when he’d hopped in her open convertible, the father of her two children, had died in Iraq.

“Please, God,” she told herself, recalling how he’d wanted another child. “Not Shawn.”

Two days later, his final message arrived from Baghdad.

The nine-page letter included a romantic poem and a few serious words about the dangers he faced riding Humvees in the Iraqi capital.

“If something should happen to me, know that I love you and Bayleigh and Cameron,” he wrote.

“I consider that my goodbye,” Stephanie recalled Monday, wiping away tears as she held tight to her husband’s ring, hanging by a band from her neck.

And she tells herself what Shawn told her: as a soldier, he needed to be in Iraq.

Shawn grew up with the military.

His dad, Robert Fugere, served in the U.S. Army, moving the family from Lewiston when Shawn was 13 years old. They lived in Granite City, Ill., until his senior year of high school, when they moved back home.

Shawn graduated from Lewiston High in 1991 and entered the Army. When he met Stephanie, she was attending the University of Tennessee.

“To me, he looked about 12 years old,” Stephanie recalled. He was tenacious, though.

“He just kept calling,” she said. He wore her down. She fell in love with his “huge” blue eyes and the way he always knew what to say to make her feel good and safe.

She also loved his Maine accent. He sounded like no one she’d ever met.

“I told myself, This is a great guy,'” she said. And they married.

They had their first child, Cameron, while stationed near Venice, Italy. Bayleigh followed three years later.

Shawn tried getting work as a recruiter. Then the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The Army made him a drill instructor.

He was known as a quiet drill instructor, Stephanie said.

“He didn’t like to holler at these young boys for no reason,” she said. He wanted them to be taught well, particularly since many were sent to Iraq.

Some died.

“He always felt a little guilty, that maybe there was something else that he might have taught them,” Stephanie said.

And he wanted to go to war.

“He felt he hadn’t done his part,” Stephanie said. Like so many soldiers, he believed his place was near the fighting.

After months of rumors, he finally received orders for September 2005.

He never wanted to talk about the possibility he might die. Stephanie tried several times but he shrugged it off.

Two days before he left, he opened up.

He wanted to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and he wanted Cameron and Bayleigh to attend college. He didn’t want them to join the military, Stephanie said. The separations during long deployments hurt too much.

“He didn’t want this for them and their families,” Stephanie said.

He left on Sept. 27.

In Baghdad, Shawn called or wrote when he could, often describing the conditions for children.

During Christmas week, he managed to call three times. He described how his job was changing and how he’d be leaving the safety of the American base less often.

But on Dec. 30, filling in for a soldier who’d been hurt, he left the compound in a Humvee. The vehicle was hit by a homemade bomb and Shawn took the full force of the explosion.

In the living room of her in-laws’ Lewiston home, Stephanie tried Monday to comprehend her loss. Nearby were the kids, Stephanie’s mom, Brenda Mills, Shawn’s sister, Crystal Desrossiers, and his parents, Robert and Delaine Fugere.

“It’s kind of like he’s still deployed,” Stephanie said, rubbing away the tears.

Shawn was buried at Arlington on Jan. 11.

Back at Fort Campbell, soldiers held a “celebration of life” ceremony on Jan. 7, releasing 33 red, white and blue balloons to commemorate Shawn’s 33rd birthday.

Soldiers in Baghdad also held a service for Shawn. Friends filmed it and sent a DVD to Stephanie.

She hasn’t watched it.

The customized cover shows pictures of Shawn and the ceremony, his boots solemnly placed before a group of men and women.

“Those were his boots,” Stephanie said, looking again at the unplayed disk.

“I’m not ready to watch it yet,” she said.

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