Note: This article was originally published on Nov. 5, 2003. We’re re-posting it now for our tribute to Colorado’s Fallen.
Fort Carsom- Johnna Loia planned Friday to marry Brian Penisten, a
Colorado Springs-area GI who boarded a helicopter Sunday morning in
Iraq.
But instead of continuing the journey to his wedding, Penisten died
with three other Fort Carson soldiers and 11 other Army men and
women shortly after taking off. A missile struck the CH-47 Chinook
and sent it careening into an Iraqi field. In addition to the dead,
20 soldiers were injured.
Now, Loia, who planned to marry in a charcoal-gray dress that
Penisten adored on her, must find something to wear to her
28-year-old fiancé’s funeral.
“Why him? Why him?” Loia asked between sobs Tuesday. “He was
almost home.”
Life for the 25-year-old Pueblo woman doesn’t seem real now.
“I wish I never found love. I hate this,” she said, breaking
down. “If I could just have five minutes, just five minutes with
him, I would give up everything – everything in the world for that.
Just five minutes.”
Just a few hours before Penisten boarded the ill-fated helicopter,
he called his fiancée and assured her that his travels would be
safe. He told her he was taking a helicopter and wouldn’t be
traveling by convoy, something considered highly dangerous for U.S.
troops because of the rampant use of explosives and mortar attacks
along roadways.
Shoulder-fired missile attacks on U.S. aircraft in Iraq had not
been successful until Sunday.
Penisten’s last words before he put the phone down, Loia said, were
“I love you, Mrs. Penisten.”
Like the Loias and the Penistens, families across the United States
are planning funerals for their GI sons and daughters. Sunday’s
attack was the deadliest single attack against U.S. forces to
date.
Each of the soldiers on the helicopter had been granted temporary
leave from Iraq and was headed home to attend to family matters or
for midtour breaks to rest and see loved ones again.
Among the other Fort Carson soldiers to die was Sgt. Daniel Bader.
He was on his way home to see his infant child, whom he kissed
goodbye last spring when she was just 6 months old. Pfc. Darius
Jennings looked forward to getting out of Iraq for a two-week
midtour break because of the mental and physical toll the
occupation had taken on him. Sgt. Ernest Bucklew boarded the
helicopter after learning that his mother was dead. He was headed
home to be with his family in Pennsylvania for her funeral.
The Loias didn’t learn that Penisten was dead until Monday
afternoon. From Sunday morning through midday Monday, they wondered
and waited anxiously by the phone. The Loias and Penisten’s parents
in Fort Wayne, Ind., kept in contact. As the hours dragged into a
full day, and then into the start of another, they began to have
hope.
Penisten’s mother had picked up the phone again Monday just as she
looked out her window and saw an unfamiliar car. Men in dark
military uniforms got out and walked toward her house.
“Just as they were coming up the doorstep, she started screaming,
‘No. No. No,”‘ said John Loia, Johnna’s father.
Instead of champagne toasts and properly welcoming Penisten into
the family, John Loia now suffers for his daughter.
“As far as I’m concerned, he was a son-in-law. He was a son. He
was officially going to be Friday. It shouldn’t have happened,”
John Loia said. “I don’t know how my daughter is going to get
through any of this. She is not doing well. She is a fragile person
anyway. Johnna finally found somebody. They clicked. This was
really the first person who was serious and wanted to take care of
her. Johnna was the same way with him. This is why she is taking it
so hard. You know when you finally find that somebody, and now it
has been just three days of hell.”
Penisten and Johnna met at a Colorado Springs nightclub Sept. 18,
2002. Johnna fell in love instantly.
“I knew the second I saw him,” Johnna said. “He was smitten. I
was too.”
