Utah family mourns soldier

ROY — Pvt. Dan Dolan had been looking forward to coming home for rest and recreation and was told he could make the trip back from Iraq in October.

"But he really wanted to come home in January because he wanted to snowboard," his mother said.

Now, Fay Dolan stood beside the front yard of that home, where many newly erected flags fluttered, and displayed photos of her 19-year-old son, her face showing her sorrow.

On Sept. 29 he would have turned 20, she said. But he was killed in an ambush on Sunday, becoming the second Utahn killed in Iraq in as many weeks. Marine Cpl. Adam Galvez of Salt Lake City was killed Aug. 20.

According to an official notification that the Department of Defense posted online, Pvt. Daniel G. Dolan, Roy, and Spec. Kenneth M. Cross, 21, of Superior, Wis., died Sunday during combat operations in Baghdad "when their M1126 Stryker Vehicle came in contact with enemy forces using an improvised explosive device and small arms fire."

"Both soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division." This unit, the Stryker Brigade Combat Team, is permanently stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash.

Dan Dolan was a Stryker driver, his family said.

The last time Fay Dolan talked to him was Aug. 21, when he telephoned. "He was always telling us what's going on and he missed us and he loved us," she said.

"He was proud to serve."

Early Monday, Army officials went to Hill Air Force Base, where the young man's father, Tim Dolan, works, and informed him of the death. A delegation from the military arrived Tuesday morning at the family's home, talking with Tim and Fay Dolan and their other child, Michelle, 16.

"We're just devastated," Tim Dolan said shortly afterward.

"He was proud. He was proud to serve his country."

Outside their home later that day, Fay Dolan leafed through a scrapbook, showing photos of her son — school portraits, a picture in the mortarboard he wore when he graduated from Roy High School last year, a view of the young man in his Army uniform.

"He was proud to serve," his mother agreed. "He didn't talk much about Iraq, not really."

He joined the Army last September and was undecided about whether he wanted to make the military his career.

"He was a really, really, really good kid," Fay Dolan said. "He was, of course, brave or he wouldn't have done it. And he was an honest kid and he was loyal to his friends."

In fact, one of those friends, two years younger than the soldier, had hammered the flags into the lawn as a tribute, she said.