Deaths of 3 airmen are shock for HAFB

Dana Sopher wrote the words to the song "Here With Me" just days before her boyfriend, Hill Air Force Base Senior Airman Daniel B. Miller Jr., was killed in Iraq.

"I planned on playing it for him when he got back," said Sopher, 19, from her home in Oneida, Ill.

One line from the song reads, "But no matter where you go, or how far the distance may be, I know you'll always be with me, right here in my heart."

Miller, 24, of Galesburg, Ill., was killed Sunday while helping to defuse a car bomb in Al-Mahmudiyah, just south of Baghdad.

The blast also claimed the lives of fellow HAFB airmen Tech Sgt. Timothy R. Weiner, 35, of Tamarac, Fla., and Senior Airman Elizabeth A. Loncki, 23, of New Castle, Del. They were the first active-duty airmen at HAFB to have been killed either during Operations Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom.

All three airmen were on a four-month tour in Iraq as members of the 775th Civil Engineer Squadron's Explosive Ordnance Disposal Flight at Hill. One airman not assigned to HAFB was injured in the explosion.

Sopher began dating Miller in the summer of 2005 and had been friends with his sister, Lisa, long before.

"He was just so fun to be around and just so funny and full of love for everyone," Sopher said. "He just always lived it up — it just made you want to be with him."

Sopher, who is studying nursing at a college in Missouri, had just returned from a church service with Miller's family when they received news of his death. She considered herself lucky at such a young age to find in her relationship with Miller "something that people can't find in a lifetime."

Funeral services for Miller, who had been at HAFB less than a year, are expected to take place in Wataga, Ill.

Weiner's brother, Eric Weiner, 39, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said his brother won't be buried in Utah, even though he had been stationed at HAFB since the fall 2005.

Eric Weiner also said the family will not disclose the location of the funeral, out of fear that a group of Kansas-based protesters may show up.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church have shown up at military funerals with signs that read "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "God Hates America" and "America Is Doomed."

All four of the Weiner brothers joined the military — and Timothy Weiner was the youngest. One sister, the oldest of five siblings, did not enlist.

"It's just the direction we all headed," Eric Weiner said about his brothers. "Timmy died, honestly, doing what he loved and something he believed in, truly."

Eric Weiner said his brother, who leaves behind a wife and a teenage son, loved the technical side of defusing bombs.