Army 2nd Lt. Seth J. Dvorin

Died February 3, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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24, of New Jersey; assigned to Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, based at Fort Drum, N.Y.; killed Feb. 3 when an improvised explosive device exploded while he was conducting counter-IED operations along a supply route in Iskandariyah, Iraq.

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N.J. soldier killed in Iraq less than a month after visit home

Associated Press

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. — When Army Lt. Seth Dvorin flew home from Iraq for two weeks of R&R last month, his family didn’t think it would be the last time they’d see the 24-year-old officer alive.

“I never thought my son was going to get killed,” Richard Dvorin said Wednesday, 24 hours after learning that his son had been killed while trying to disarm a bomb on an Iraqi roadside. “I’m an optimist. I knew my boy was coming back.”

Seth Dvorin was killed Feb. 3 — 17 days after returning to Iraq — near Iskandariyah, 35 miles south of Baghdad, his family told The Star-Ledger of Newark.

He was the only soldier killed in the blast and the 17th soldier with New Jersey ties to die in Iraq.

The family learned of the soldier’s death, when an Army colonel and a chaplain from Fort Monmouth arrived at their East Brunswick home with the news.

The officers told sister Rebekah Dvorin that Seth’s unit had been ordered to clear the area of the homemade mines and bombs that have killed dozens of troops.

“They told us they were in a convoy and saw something in the road,” she said. “My brother, the hero, told his driver to stop. That’s when the bomb detonated, when they were trying to dismantle it.”

Dvorin, a South Brunswick High School graduate, was part of the 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum, N.Y.

Richard Dvorin, 61, an Air Force veteran and retired New Brunswick police officer, called his son a loyal, responsible commander who sought to make life as easy as possible on the soldiers he oversaw.

Offered two weeks’ leave in December, the father said, Dvorin refused to go because so many of his platoon members had not yet had the chance.

“He was a good human being,” the father said, tears rolling down his face.

Dvorin leaves behind a 25-year-old widow, Kelly Harris. The 2002 Rutgers graduate married his college sweetheart on Aug. 26, a week before his Sept. 2 deployment.