Yesterday a Woman comes into the store(Army-Navy) with her two grandsons.

As the Kids check out every crevice of the store, The youngest boy wants to buy two patches, but Grandma says He can only have one. Probably a good lesson in allowence- money management. So I said were having  a "two for one"sale. So the little guy is so happy he can have both patches, he runs up and gives my knees a big hug and says  thankyou. I said to the Grandmother this seemed important to Him? She said it is, His Uncle was overseas in Iraq.He was in that unit,and  He was in a Helicopter Unit.  He  was a very good son. He's gone now. .. He bought me a new car before he left! He was such a good son, I miss Him very Much.

They paid for the patch,, I gave them some candy out of the Mortor tube candy dispencer. And We all said Good bye.

I can't really describe How that made me feel. Happy to make a Kids day. Sad to see the Mom have to speak of her son in the past tence. Honored to have met Eric Smiths family.

We have all lost friends and family in this war, and Past wars. And, How often do we see the effects it has on our children.

I would love some day to see what a great young man this kid grows up to be.

God Bless The Smith Family. Rochester, NY

Below is a News article I found on the Internet.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Eric A. Smith

41, of Rochester, N.Y.; assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Aviation Regiment, Hunter Army Airfield, Ga.; killed in a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crash in central Iraq.

Eric A. Smith had wanted to fly since he was a little boy, but by the time he graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology he figured his grades would keep him grounded.

In the mid-1980s, some Air Force pilots he met at a bar in San Diego gave him new hope, said his mother, Lillian Lake, 70, of Lake Placid. They invited him to take a flight.

"They told him he would be better off going into the Army and being a helicopter pilot, even though it's more difficult to fly a helicopter than a plane," she said.

Smith, 41, a 16-year Army veteran, was killed April 2 when the helicopter he was in went down.

In December, he visited his mother and spoke of the possibility of not coming home.

"He said, 'Remember it was my choice, I was not drafted. I was not in the reserves. I love what I'm doing and I want to die that way — flying a helicopter — if that's the way it has to be,' " she recalled.

The youngest of three brothers, Smith played soccer at Brighton High School in the Rochester area and was, his mother said, "picky about his friends."

He never married.

"He was always hoping to find a girl to marry," his mother said. "But because he moved around so much, if he met somebody he felt it wouldn't be fair to pick her up from her roots unless it was the right type of girl that could adjust."

— USA Today, Associated Press