West Valley Guardsman lovingly laid to rest

WEST VALLEY CITY — Utah National Guard 2nd Lt. Scott B. Lundell asked his wife, Jeanine, a question over an Internet Web camera just hours before he was killed in Afghanistan.

"'Do you know how much I love you?"' Lundell asked his wife, who recalled their final exchange of words at her husband's funeral Saturday morning.

Lundell, 35, West Valley City, was killed Nov. 25 when he and about 100 members of the Afghan National Army, which he was leading into battle, were fired upon by small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. It was Lundell's first firefight.

He leaves behind a wife and four children, ages 10 and under.

Jeanine, a former gymnast and dancer, said her husband's first words to her 20 years ago went something like, "You have great calves." A crowd that overflowed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meeting house let out a collective chuckle.

The two first dated while attending Granger High School and they married in 1993 after Lundell returned from serving a mission for the LDS Church in the Philippines. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Utah, and the couple would eventually have four children together.

But when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, happened, the events stirred something in Lundell.

"This affected Scott very deeply," his wife said.

In 2004, after what his wife called a "difficult year" in his life, Lundell told her he wanted to join the National Guard.

"I was shocked, to say the least," Jeanine said. "I wanted to say, 'No."'

But she prayed for guidance and decided on her own that what her husband wanted to do was right. When an opportunity came up earlier this year to deploy to Afghanistan, Lundell took it.

"He didn't have to go, he chose to go," Jeanine said.

Soldiers who served with Lundell echoed the reasons his wife gave during the church service for why he joined the military later in life.

"He joined because he felt it was his time to serve," said 1st Lt. Tyler Jensen. He added how Lundell felt guilty that others were fighting and dying to protect his family.

On Saturday, he was remembered as a loving husband and father, an outdoorsman and someone who liked to build things.

As a child, Lundell, one of eight children, was "meticulous" about the snow forts he built. He would pour water over them to form ice that would keep enemy snowballs from penetrating a fort's exterior.

"He thought that was great fun," said his sister, Andrea Miner.

He would try to engage his sister in snowball fights, but when he realized one particular battle was unfair in his favor, he invited his sister into his fort. He told her, "'You stay here and be my snowball maker,'" Miner recalled.