NORWAY – Corey Dan’s family is working with a veterans group to pay for his baby and the baby’s mother to attend Dan’s funeral in the Oxford Hills where he grew up.
“He’s the Corey that’s left,” Dan’s grandmother Sharon Bouchard of Paris said about the 3-month-old who Dan never got a chance to meet. Austin was born in Indianapolis last December on the day Dan left for his second tour of duty in Iraq with the Army. The mother and baby live in Indiana.
Dan, a sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division based in Fort Campbell, Ky., was killed Monday in Iraq. He was 22. His family learned Wednesday that his body will not be sent home for another seven to 10 days.
Bouchard said the family is planning a memorial service at the local high school for the soldier who graduated from Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in 2001.
“It will be at the high school because it will be too huge to contain anywhere else,” Bouchard said. “It will be a full-blown military funeral.”
Bouchard said she has not met her great-grandson. But Dan’s mom, Wanda Kilgore, of Norway visited Austin recently. Her employers at The Lake Store in Norway, owners Dick and Charlene Manson, bought Kilgore a ticket to Indianapolis as a Christmas present so she could meet the newborn.
Dan enlisted in the Army in 2001 and re-enlisted last summer for another four years. He had hoped to retire early from service after completing his second deployment in Iraq, and he had plans to become a police officer. Family and friends thought that he would have returned to work in this area to be with his large family.
Dan was especially close to his younger brother, Tristan. Five years ago, Dan had Tristan’s birth date tattooed on his arm – 3-26-96 – and named Tristan as his beneficiary before he first left for Kuwait in 2003.
On the Saturday before Dan died, he called Tristan from Iraq and asked him what he wanted for his upcoming birthday.
“Tristan said a video game,” Bouchard said. “I suspect Corey was going to make sure he got it somehow.”
Bouchard said it was unclear at this point who would receive Dan’s military benefits.
A military spokeswoman said benefits are awarded to all beneficiaries named by a deceased soldier.
But Bouchard said regardless of the financial specifics, Dan’s new baby would be taken care of.
“All of us will make sure Austin is provided for,” Bouchard said.
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