Army Col. Theodore S. Westhusing

Died June 5, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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44, of Dallas; assigned to the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.; serving with the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq; died June 5 of non-combat-related injuries in Baghdad.

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West Point professor dies in Iraq

By Shaun Schafer

Associated Press

TULSA, Okla. — A West Point professor who volunteered to serve in Iraq has been killed in action, family members said Monday.

Col. Ted S. Westhusing, 45, was killed in action on Sunday, family members said Monday. They did not release specifics on how he was killed. Family members received official notification of the death from the military late Sunday.

Westhusing, a 1979 graduate of Jenks High School, had doctorates in Russian, philosophy and military strategy, his eldest brother Tim Westhusing of Broken Arrow, said Monday.

“He wanted to go over there and make things better,” Tim Westhusing said. “He has a wife and three children. He didn’t have to go.

“This is the worst of all possible results.”

His mother, Terry Clark, of Tulsa, said he gave up “the good life” of a full-time teaching job to go to Iraq because he felt it was what Americans should do. His six-month leave for the Iraq assignment was scheduled to end next month, Clark said.

“He was a strong, Christian, ethical man and did what he believed was right,” Clark said.

A basketball player at Jenks and a National Merit Scholar, Ted Westhusing could have gone anywhere, Clark said, but he chose the U.S. Military Academy and the Army as a career.

“He came from a military family, a family with a history of military service,” Clark said. “We are all very proud of him.”

Westhusing graduated from West Point in 1983. He left for Iraq near the end of 2004 and was helping train the Iraqi army, working as counter-terrorism and special operations director under Lt. Gen. David Petraeus.

He wrote a number of columns on his military experience that were printed in West Point and elsewhere. Among them was an opinion piece that appeared in The Tulsa Tribune on the eve of the first Iraq war in December 1990. In it, he detailed the nature of the modern soldier.

“In the minds of friend and foe alike, our Army is, without a doubt, the best-trained, best-equipped, best-led and most intelligent of any in our nation’s history,” he wrote. “Our soldiers are recognized as the world’s finest.”

He was an adviser for the movie “Troy.” He explained military planning and troop movement to filmmakers.

“He was a smart, moral man,” his brother said. “He was an upstanding member of his community.

“He was an incredible guy. He saw the inhumanity and he wanted to make a difference.”

Ted Westhusing will be buried at West Point, Clark said.