Note: This article was originally published on July 3, 2003. We’re re-posting it now for our tribute to Colorado’s Fallen.
THOMAS BROOMHEAD
Fort Myers, Fla.
Rather than tell of the battles in Iraq in his last note to his wife, Army Sgt. Thomas F. Broomhead showered her with compliments
in a Mother’s Day card.
“All I wanted to know was about Iraq, and all he kept talking about was how I was a great mother and how lucky the kids were,” Kelli Broomhead said.
Broomhead, 34, who was stationed at Fort Carson, died May 27 in enemy fire in Fallujah.
Born in Ohio and raised in Florida, Broomhead joined the Marines out of high school in 1989. He hoped to become a helicopter pilot.
“He liked it a lot. He was in it for the long haul,” his wife said. The couple have three sons, ages 7, 9 and 11.
The two met in Arizona and married in 2000. It was Broomhead’s sense of humor that drew her to him, and it was the memory of the
teasing and inside jokes that allowed her to smile after he died. But the same memories – her husband playing football in the
backyard with their boys or the Army ball they attended on Valentine’s Day – also brought tears.
