Were was I being when I wasn't being here?

Hello all... my interest in daily blogging was recently overwhelmed by a death, as it were, in the family. Jeff Calero, team leader of one of our ODAs, was KIA in Afghanistan and I've had to help with the funeral arrangements. It's over now, and Jeff was laid to rest with full military honors, awarded several medals by the two generals who attended, and posthumously promoted to Major (he was on the list before his death intervened, and had been putting the promotion off to stay with an ODA). 

Several family members agreed with me that he'd have been embarrassed by all the attention. I may or may not write more about this, but I've put a couple of links after the jump so you can learn a little more about this great American and the family of great Americans whence he came. One thing that is not in the links is that almost every male in the family was a proud veteran, and two cousins also served in SF.

The links may make him sound like Superman (and I picked these links because the stuff in them is generally true!), but for Group, he was an average guy. Which is to say, there are many things in Group, but no average guys. So every loss really, really costs us. 

RIP Jeff, and God bless your family and friends. See you on the other side.

The New York Times just used a brief AP report which mentioned the death and went on to the usual "grim toll" riff. I suppose its dwindling Manhattanite liberal readership is utterly incurious about the sort of New Yorker that serves in the military. But Newsday and the tabloids had good coverage, doing what the Times couldn't be bothered to do: contacting Jeff's family. 

The Daily News had a really nice piece by Jess Wisloski and Leo Standora, including a family photo of Jeff at his SFQC graduation in late 2002. The Daily News followed that up with a touching editorial. Thanks, from all of us "in the family." 

Newsday's Zach Dowdy had another one of the best write-ups, again based on talking to people who knew Jeff, rather than the Times/AP approach of rewriting a press release to match organizational slant. 

Newsday also had a reporter at the ceremony at the Calverton National Cemetery; on a day, managers told us, that Calverton was conducting 45 other funerals, four others with full honors like Jeff's.

There was a reporter and photographer yukking it up -- laughing and joking -- during that ceremony. I don't know whether these particular ghouls were from Newsday or some other organization, but I recall wanting to reach out and strangle them. This press disrespect for soldiers is nothing new, and we reciprocate in kind. 

The local Queens Borough papers had better and more personal coverage than the nationally-known ones. Maybe humility helps a writer... if so, the Times will never figure it out. Here's the Queens Courier (with a picture of the proud but devastated parents) and the Flushing Times-Ledger (which wins the brevity award for a piece which reports personal info nobody else printed) for example.

For comparison, here's the somewhat telegraphic official DOD press release, the more detailed soc.mil version, and soc.mil's bio [.pdf] of Jeff. 

Jeff also is memorialized on the USASOC Fallen Heroes Wall [not loading at the moment, but the link is confirmed] which includes all Army Special Operations soldiers, and on Quietpros, which is more SF-oriented (and is one of the last places on the net you can see the terrible <blink> tag). According to Quietpros, which is maintained by a Vietnam SF veteran, Jeff was the 76th US SF soldier to have died so far in OIF/OEF. Unlike Big Green, we've suffered a lot more in Afghanistan than in Iraq so far.