Our Latest American Hero #143

Army Pfc. David A. Jefferson, 23, of Philadelphia, PA; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.; died July 2 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device.


Army Pfc. David A. Jefferson Returns Home

The body of Army Pfc. David A. Jefferson arrived Sunday evening at Dover Air Force Base, where his father was waiting with another family of a fallen soldier. "It's a very beautiful ceremony," said James M. Lyles, Jefferson's father. "I really believe everyone should see it. Things don't actually hit you until you actually see it."

Jefferson, 23, a combat medic from Philadelphia, was killed in Kandahar when his unit was attacked by insurgents using an IED, the Defense Department said.

On Tuesday evening, Jefferson's 2-year-old son, Ian, played on his great-grandmother's porch on Sparks Street in the city's Ogontz section while family members recalled David. Ian had not been told of his father's death.

The family has a deep background in the military. Lyles, 70, who drove to Dover from his home in Columbia, S.C., and then on to Philadelphia, spent 30 years in the Army. Jefferson's brother, William, 28, served in the Air Force. Their mother, Annette Jefferson, was also in the Army. She was 53 when she died in February of lung cancer.

Jefferson, born in Philadelphia, followed his father around the country from base to base, from Durham, N.C., to California, his father said. He came back to Philadelphia as a teen and attended Lankenau High School. He did not graduate, but later got his G.E.D. He saw his career opportunities were limited and thought the Army would give him a foundation for something better, his father said.

"It more or less made him into a man," he said.

With his experience as a combat medic, he was considering medical school after his service, said his maternal grandmother, Mildred Jefferson, 81.

He was deployed to Afghanistan in May.