Army Staff Sgt. Michael C. Parrott

Died November 10, 2005 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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49, of Timnath, Colo.; assigned to the Joint Forces Headquarters, Colorado Army National Guard, Cheyenne, Wyo.; died Nov. 10 in Balad, Iraq, of injuries sustained in Khalidiyah, Iraq, where his unit was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire. Also killed was Sgt. Joshua A. Terando.

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Soldier with Colorado ties killed in Iraq

Associated Press

CANTON, N.C. — A member of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard who lived in Colorado was killed by a sniper as he patrolled a highway in Iraq, his family said Friday.

Staff Sgt. Mike Parrott, 49, worked in construction at Colorado State University, his wife, Meg Corwin told the Asheville Citizen-Times from her home in Timnath, Colo.

“I’ve lost my best friend, and I don’t know what life will be like without him,” said Corwin, who also is a professor at the school.

Parrott, a member of the 28th Infantry of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, died Thursday, his mother, Suzanne Parrott said. The Defense Department has not yet reported his death.

Suzanne Parrott is a retired nurse and hospice volunteer who said she takes death really well, but she had trouble breathing when Corwin informed her of her son’s death.

“This is different,” his mother said. “This is real different.”

Corwin and Parrott met in 1986 at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where he worked in the facilities department after graduating about five years earlier and she was a political science student with a young son.

Parrott’s brown eyes, his big smile and the fact he read Voltaire in the bathroom charmed her. They had much in common, including a dislike of the war in Iraq.

“My husband and I both loath and despise the war,” she said. “He was under no illusion about this war.”

He didn’t believe the Bush administration’s reasons for the war, but Parrott believed he could do some good, Corwin said.

“Mike went over there because he really had this notion ... his experience might actually save some young kid’s life and he also wanted to feel that he was useful and a part of something,” Corwin said.

For his upcoming 50th birthday in December, she had planned to send him an iPod filled with his favorite music, including Nanci Griffith and Steve Earle.

“He sort of walked sideways on the crossbeam of life,” Corwin said. “He never walked it straight. “He promised me. He said ‘I won’t get hurt.”’

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Slain Wyoming guardsman laid to rest in N.C.

Associated Press

CANTON, N.C. — A member of the Wyoming Army National Guard who was killed in Iraq this month was remembered over the weekend as a person who always tried to do the right thing.

Staff Sgt. Mike Parrott of Timnath, Colorado, was buried over the weekend in his native North Carolina.

Parrott, 49, was killed by a sniper’s bullet while patrolling in Iraq on Nov. 10.

Parrott had served in Iraq as a member of the Wyoming Guard’s 115th Field Artillery Brigade. He volunteered to go back and was deployed with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard when he was killed.

Officials say about a dozen members of the Wyoming Guard have volunteered to serve in other state units in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Parrott worked in construction at Colorado State University. His wife has said he volunteered to go back to Iraq because he believed he could do some good.

“Mike went over there because he really had this notion ... his experience might actually save some young kid’s life and he also wanted to feel that he was useful and a part of something,” his wife Meg Corwin told the Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina this month.

“He promised me,” Corwin said. “He said, ‘I won’t get hurt.’”