SSG Terry D. Wagoner

Standing here reading a eulogy for a friend is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Despite what we know can happen, no one is ever prepared to lose someone they are close to. Knowing that my friend died a hero doesn’t make his death easier to accept and it doesn’t fill the emptiness left in my life as a result of his passing. I will forever be a better person because of my friendship with SSG Wagoner.

John Stuart Mills said “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.  The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

SSG Wagoner was that better man.  He did believe that there was something worth fighting for. He wasn’t a soldier simply because it was a job. He wasn’t planning on using his college fund and he wasn’t trying to escape from a boring life. SSG Wagoner could have made a life anywhere, but he chose to be a soldier. After one tour in Iraq, he reenlisted and chose to remain a soldier.  He believed in what he was doing and he believed he was doing something good for a purpose greater than himself. It seems cliché to say someone was dedicated to the Army, the mission, and their unit, because some generic  variation of that phrase is in every award citation printed by the Army. In this case, however, there is a huge amount of truth contained in that passage. SSG Wagoner was dedicated to the Army. He was an outstanding soldier. He was dedicated to our Troop.  He worked tirelessly to accomplish any mission. Weather it was a combat mission or building a bookcase for an office, SSG Wagoner approached it with the same enthusiasm.

Mostly though, SSG Wagoner was my friend.  He was energetic, friendly,  curious, addicted to coffee, smoked a pack of cigarettes every day, and prayed every night.  His hands were never clean because he was always working on something.  He only had a few close friends, and I consider myself lucky to have been one of them. SSG Wagoner was a good soldier. He worked hard, he cared about his troops, he cared about his unit, accomplishing his unit’s mission, and he cared about being a soldier.  That made him stand out, but it wasn’t what defined him. What defined Sparky was his fierce loyalty to his friends, his love for his wife Kate and his daughter Diana. 

SSG Wagoner was infinitely curious and possessed almost boundless energy. He wanted to know how everything mechanical worked.  He fixed everything.  Even if it wasn’t broken.  Anything that worked just fine could always be made to work better. He had a practically new truck and was planning to replace the engine with one that was bigger.  Most children want money or toys from their parents. SSG Wagoner’s father told me that he wanted his old lawnmower when he was younger. In Iraq, he rewired entire buildings, repaired vehicles, built walls, rebuilt water pumps, and anything else that happened to be in his path.

Fueled by endless cups of coffee, SSG Wagoner worked for hours. He would go 15 or 16 hours without stopping and then volunteer for duty in the middle of the night.  We would wake up in the mornings and always be surprised by something.  A room would be rearranged or an office cleaned or even the entire contents of one room moved to a completely different room. It seemed he never ran out of energy and never ran out of things to do.

It was those two attributes that made 1SG Brod nick name him Sparky. Today, I have referred to him as SSG Wagoner or Terry Wagoner, or as his family called him, Daniel, but I, and many others will always remember him as Sparky. Junior soldiers even called him SGT Sparky and referred to his wife as Mrs. Sparky. If there was ever a name that brought to mind an image of a person, this was it. Sparky fit his personality perfectly. So many people called him Sparky that he even began to refer to himself as Sparky.  Most of us stencil our last and first name on our belongings. His simply said “Sparky”.

Sparky was one of my best friends. For the last year and a half we were part of an inseparable trio. Sparky, 1SG Brod, and I lived together, worked together, ate together, watched movies together, went on missions together, and laughed together. We shared our ideas, our dreams, our problems, and our joys. We will grieve his death and we will always have a small piece of our lives incomplete without him, but I find peace in the knowledge that someday, I will see him again. By that time he will probably have a garage door opener installed on the pearly gates be trying to rebuild angel’s wings to get more horsepower, but he’ll be there waiting with his crooked smile, a cup of coffee, and a nametag on his shirt that says, “Sparky”.