Former Minnesotan killed in helicopter accident in Iraq

01/10/2006

Stuart Anderson, of the Iowa National Guard, died in Iraq in a helicopter crash in bad weather. It was his second tour of duty.

Tom Ford,
Star Tribune

Last update: January 10, 2006 – 1:23 AM

While growing up in west-central Minnesota, Stuart Anderson could sit hour by hour listening to his grandpa and uncle talk about serving in World War II.

The stories of their service inspired him to follow in their footsteps.

Anderson, 44, a major in the Iowa National Guard, died Saturday in northern Iraq when a Black Hawk helicopter he was in with 11 others crashed in bad weather.

Anderson, who was raised in Benson, Minn., and graduated in 1980 from Benson High School, had been living near Dubuque, Iowa, with his wife and two daughters, a high school freshman and a sixth-grader.

Anderson, a welder by trade, was on his second tour of duty in the Middle East.

His father, Claremont, who lives in Hoffman, Minn., said Anderson always did his best to reassure his family that he would be OK.

“Where I’m going, it’s going to be duck soup,” Stuart would say. “I think [he said those things] more or less to make us feel good,” his father said. He regularly sent his family e-mails from Iraq, commenting on the weather and joking about the food, saying he was sick of eating camel.

An outgoing, story-telling type, Anderson loved to talk “anyplace, anytime and with anyone,” Claremont said. “You were at complete ease with him.” He said it was little surprise when his son joined the Army Reserves during his sophomore year at North Dakota State University.

His father said Anderson felt bad that he wasn’t called to duty for Desert Storm. Serving now was a way to utilize his years of training and to repay the military for providing it.

“He felt it was his duty,” his father said. “This is what he had to do.”

Anderson first went to the Middle East in the fall of 2003 for a one-year tour. He started his second stint last fall.

His father said he was never in any direct combat this time or during his first tour.

Still, with “the whole of Iraq now a front line,” Claremont said, he and other family members were more nervous about him this time around.

“I was a lot more concerned,” he said. “You get this feeling. You can’t put your finger on it, there’s no logical reason for it. But there’s this apprehension.”

U.S. military officials said the UH-60 Black Hawk crashed just before midnight Saturday about 7 miles east of Tal Afar. All 12 aboard died.

For Anderson, his wife and two girls always came first. “When he was home, he was home,” said Pete Weber, 26, a former Marine whose sister and father live next door to Anderson in Iowa.

But Weber guesses that Anderson would have been in the military full time were it not for his devotion to his family.

“He loved every minute of [the military],” he said. “I think it was the people he worked with and the work he was doing.”

Anderson’s father said his son didn’t expect to die in Iraq. “There was no doubt in his mind he was coming back,” he said.