An Ordinary Soldier Leaves Extraordinary Emptiness -- Family Struggles To Cope With Death Of Son In Gulf

"When I think of Jimmy, I see him with a little tackle box in one hand and a fishing rod in the other. He's about 16 years old, and he's making his way to the waterfront." - Uncle Paulie

CHICAGO - Jimmy Heyden won't go fishing anymore. He won't chase his daughter Stephanie around the back yard or call her "Boobie." He won't come back up north to the old neighborhood in Chicago and go out some night with Leslie and Ralphie. He'll never say "OK, Daddy" to his father, and he'll never again lean down, put his long arms around his wife and envelop her in a kiss.

Jimmy died in the Persian Gulf War. In Saudi Arabia, the official telegram said. Outside a town called Hafar al Batin, his captain wrote in a letter that came a month after his death. He was not killed during the fighting. Jimmy survived that.

"Last time I called," he wrote his dad Feb. 27, "I told you that I would be about 5 to 10 kilometers from the border. Well, we moved. Now I'm in, and please sit down for this - I'm in Iraq. Yep, Iraq. We moved yesterday, and please don't tell Lisa because she is already worried to death that something is going to happen to me.

"The only reason we moved is because the `grunts' are so far in (Iraq) that we also had to move to support them. Believe me, I was not happy about this. Also, the news of the century: I helped capture 10 POWs, and, something that I'm (not) too proud of but had to happen, I shot three terrorists. I killed two and wounded one.

"What happened, me and two other guys went on contact to fix one of the tanks at the border. Well,when we drove up, the Iraqis were ambushing the tank that we were going to fix. Well, we jumped out of the truck, laid flat on our bellies and started to shoot. They shot a missile at the tank; it hit where the driver sat, killing him and putting the tank out of commission. I never seen the guy with the missile, but after he shot it, all three of us started to shoot in that direction. We killed totally seven of them and wounded four and took 10 POWs. After it happened, I had a new look on life."

Jimmy Heyden survived all that. He died 13 days after the ground war ended. On March 12 he was in a convoy heading for Hafar al Batin when the vehicle he was driving left the road and overturned. Within 20 minutes of the accident, according to the U.S. Army, he was helicoptered to a medical facility, where he died from head injuries.

Three days later, on March 15, members of Company E, 27th Support Battalion, First Cavalry Division held an afternoon memorial service for Spec. 4 James Paul Heyden in the faraway country where he died, Saudi Arabia.

At 10 a.m. on March 20 at St. Alphonsus Church, the North Side Chicago church where he was baptized, and in the city where he was born, his family and friends attended his funeral and then tearfully buried him.

Though his name went on a list, Jimmy was no mere statistic. Though he lived only 24 years, he had a history, created a human legacy and left an aching void in the lives of scores of people. Memories are all they now have.

The snow came into town sideways that night as angry early spring snowstorms often do in Chicago, with slanting iced arrows trying to slide into cracks that never gave in during the winter. James Heyden was in bed asleep. Soon he would get up to work the midnight shift. But not yet. And then the doorbell rang: Someone was at the door.

It was 9 p.m. At about the same time, down in Tuscumbia, Ala., where his daughter-in-law was staying while her husband was overseas, someone was at her door, too.

"I was in my underwear, and I opened the apartment door but stood behind it and shouted down to the person on the first floor who rang my bell," says James Heyden, a hospital maintenance mechanic.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"`I need to talk to you, sir,' a voice said.

"I said: `I work nights. You are interrupting my sleep. Are you selling something?'

"And he said, `I'm Chief Warrant Officer Gawlick, sir.'

"As soon as he said `Chief Warrant Officer,' my knees buckled. That was it for me. I knew he hadn't come to tell me Jimmy got a haircut. He came to tell me that Jimmy was dead. The war was over, but my son was dead. I told him to come upstairs, and I put on my clothes and we sat in the kitchen looking at each other. And neither one of us knew what to say. He'd never done this before, and neither had I."

It was 9 p.m. in northern Alabama, too. Ten-month-old Sean and 3-year-old Stephanie had just had their baths. Lisa was about to read them a story and put them to bed.

"There was a banging on my mother's front door," Lisa Heyden says. "I went and opened it, and there stood two Army captains and a chaplain in uniform. I wanted to close the door and tell them to go home. I knew what this meant. I knew what they were going to say, and I didn't want to hear it. I collapsed in a chair. They then said, `Are you Mrs. James Heyden?' And I said, `Yes.'

"Then one of them said, `We are sorry to inform you that your husband died this morning in Saudi Arabia,' and I began to cry. I sobbed. I held on to one captain, and he stood here and let me hold on. My daughter, Stephanie, came into the room and said, `Why are these Army men so sad?' I don't remember if I answered. I don't remember the rest of that night."

Within hours of those two 9 p.m. visits - timed perfectly by design, one in Chicago and one in Alabama - word spread by telephone through both Lisa's and Jimmy's families: It was official. The officers in uniform had come to the door. The war was over, yes. They'd seen that on TV, but they were all still holding their breath until Jimmy came home.

And now word had come that something had happened and Jimmy had been killed.

Jimmy Heyden was a child of the city. He grew up where his parents did, in the same old German neighborhood. His great-grandpa Philip Geuther owned the two-flat they lived in at 3331 N. Seminary Ave., and he lived right next door. Grandpa loved fishing, kept tanks of goldfish on his back porch and had a dog named Perch. Jimmy grew up to be like Grandpa. He loved fishing too.

Grandma Esther Heyden, his father's mother, lived nearby, close enough so that he could walk over to see her and eat her homemade cookies. Every weekday Jimmy's dad, Jim, got up and went to work at Zenith Corp., where he was a repairman. His mother, Susie, stayed home with Jimmy; his two older sisters, Laurie and Diane; and their dog, Dempsey.

"There are no super stories about Jimmy," says Laurie Gudell, four years older than her brother. "He didn't climb Mount Everest. He was just your average boy. We played in the snow, had mud fights after it rained. We played all summer, went to movies on Saturday, went crabbing on Fridghts at Belmont Harbor."

"I was his big sister, I was his friend," says Diane Mellor, two years older than Jimmy. "He was a sweetheart. We called him `Bim.' He was clumsy, awkward and was always breaking his glasses, and we'd have to help him hide that from Dad. Breaking things, losing things - that was Jimmy."

"I was always afraid to look when the kids would say, `Mom, see what Jimmy is doing,' " his mother says. "Jimmy didn't understand what `dangerous' was. He never calculated a risk. He'd ride his bike around with no brakes."

From the time Jimmy was old enough to leave his back yard, he was friends with Leslie Perez and Ralphie Vera. Both of them lived down the block, just past "Nosey Rosie," the neighborhood grouch. The three boys were inseparable. Susie Heyden called them "The Three Musketeers," for they were always off on adventures.

Jimmy, Ralphie and Leslie. They were always together. Riding their bikes, going fishing at 3 a.m. at Belmont Harbor, shooting baskets over at the playground at Hawthorne school and playing street hockey in the alley. Talking about girls.

In addition to fishing, Jimmy learned to swim and did it well. At St. Patrick's High School, he was on the swimming team. His long, thin body cut the water clean and quickly. All arms and legs, swimming was the one sport he was built for.

As he shot up to 6 feet 3 inches, his bodily coordination couldn't keep up with him except in the water. When he was 13, he was a good enough swimmer to save his cousin Cindy Luedke from drowning while at a picnic. But he never told anyone about it.

"He was like that," his father says. "He never bragged about anything."

The summer after Jimmy, Ralphie and Leslie graduated from high school was a wonderful lazy time of ordering pizzas, going fishing, shooting baskets and just laying back. Together the three had agreed to join the Army in the fall. The Army would give them a job, some training and, most important, benefits from the GI Bill. None of them had the money to go to college. Ralphie failed the physical, but Jimmy and Leslie were set to go.

"I never worried about Jimmy going in the Army, because there was nothing going on," says his mother, whose father was killed in World War II. The evening Jimmy left, he and his father shared their first beer together. "It was Labor Day, and the recruiter was coming to pick them up," recalls Jim Heyden. "I took the boys out in back, and we sat at the picnic table. I wanted to give them a fatherly talk about the things boys who are going away should know. About AIDS and women and being careful. I was a little embarrassed, but I said it. Jimmy listened and gave me that silly grin. Then the recruiter came. It was 8:30 and turning dark. That was it. Jimmy was in the Army."

It was just after basic training and his arrival at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., that Jimmy met Lisa. He'd come with a bunch of young soldiers from the base to the restaurant where she was working. It was her 22nd birthday, and she was in a mood to celebrate. After she spotted him that night, her eyes never left him.

"We never really went on a date," Lisa says. "That next week I went to the barracks and watched the guys play volleyball, and then Jimmy and I would talk. Talk for hours. Sometimes I would call him when I was getting off, and I'd go out and he'd sneak down, and we'd talk until 5 in the morning.

"Then one Friday night, after they'd sent him away for a few days, he came to the restaurant when I got off, and we went to a bar called Cheers. He said, `I'm going to Germany.' I said: `Oh, what a beautiful place. I'd love to go with you.'

"Jimmy said, `Come with me.' And I said, `How?' He said, `Marry me.' I got so nervous I didn't answer. I just dragged him to the dance floor, and I don't even remember the song we danced to. We went back to our seats, and he said, `I'm serious.' I couldn't talk. Right there in the bar he got down on his knees and said, `Will you marry me,' and I looked at him and I said, `Yes.' "

"For the next seven days he brought me a rose every single day, and on the seventh day, a Friday, the 11th of April, we went down to the Huntsville County Courthouse and got married. He had on his Class A's, I had on my peach dress and we arrived at 5 minutes to 3. We were married at 3 p.m., and we walked out at 3:05 p.m. as Mr. and Mrs. James Heyden.

Jimmy and Lisa had two children, Stephanie and Sean, and would have been married five years this year. For a short time during their marriage, Jimmy was out of the Army. But unable to find work that he liked and needing the benefits of the service, he re-enlisted and, with his family, moved to Fort Hood in Texas. Soon after that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

On Feb. 3, Jimmy Heyden got sent to Saudi Arabia.

"During the war, I was glued to the television, listening for news of the First Cavalry Division and trying to picture what Jimmy was doing," says his sister Diane. "Was he hot? Was he sunburned? Was there sand in his teeth? Was he safe?"

"I talked to him just before he left," his sister Diane says. "He was in New York, and I started to cry. `Jimmy, I'm scared,' I said. And he said, `Diane, don't cry. You'll make me cry, and soldiers don't cry.' He told me, `I want to make you proud of me,' and I said, `I am already proud of you.' "

Jimmy called Lisa several times from Saudi Arabia to tell her he loved her and the children. He could not say where he was, but he did tell her in his last call, March 4, after the ground war had ended, that he was clearing mines and cleaning up debris.

On March 12 Jimmy Heyden was dead.

"The last time I ever talked to Jimmy, we teased and joked about having a beer together and listening to his war stories," his father says. "We talked for only eight or nine minutes. God, I wish it had been five hours."

"The death of a son is like someone has torn a piece of your heart out," Jimmy's mother says. "I see his face. I hear him laughing. When I went to see him in January, before he left, I just knew - somehow, I felt it - that I would never see him again. How do you hold someone tighter and kiss them more when you know you will never see them again?"

"I believe Jimmy died for his country. And I believe he is in heaven. If I couldn't believe that, there would be no hope," his father says. "I was asked by several reporters after Jimmy died if I still supported the war. I said, `Do you think because someone else's son dies it is OK but not if he is my own?' I told them I am not a hypocrite. I have not changed my mind or my views. I think we did the right thing.

"Do I miss my son? Oh, yes. To know I will never see my little kid again - that's hard for me to think about. Will a day go by that I don't think of him? No. But I have not changed my mind."

"It was a fairy-tale romance we had, and I loved him very much," Lisa says. "We had so many dreams. That's what hurts the most. Now those dreams will never be. But he left me two beautiful children. We have tapes of him. I've got memories. The children will never go without knowing their daddy. No one will ever replace him. I have no regrets."

Jimmy Heyden lived to be only 24 years old. Too short a life for someone who meant so much to so many people. During that life, he grew from a gangly kid to a filled-out man. From an impish Musketeer to a husband and lover. From obedient son to responsible father.

And, to those who knew and loved him, from a shy little boy with glasses to a hero.