The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
They died May 27, in Chak-E Wardak District, Afghanistan, when their unit was attacked by enemy forces.
Killed were:
Spc. Kedith L. Jacobs, 21, of Denver, Colo, and
Pfc. Leroy Deronde III, 22, Jersey City, New Jersey.
Spc. Jacobs was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas.
Pfc. Deronde was assigned to F Company, 125th Brigade Support Battalion attached to 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas.
For more information related to this release, media may contact the 1st Armored Division public affairs office at 915-744-8406 or 915-203-3769.
CORRECTION: June, 2, 2012; no. 457-12: The unit for Spc. Jacobs was corrected to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas. The unit for Pfc. Deronde was corrected to F Company, 125th Brigade Support Battalion attached to 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas.
By Julia Terruso and Richard Khavkine/The Star-Ledger
JERSEY CITY — Army Pfc. LeRoy DeRonde III was coming into his own, distancing himself from a hard-luck childhood and stepping up to take care of his family.
The 22-year-old Jersey City man saw the military as a way to do that, his family said, in a plan that began to form eight years ago when his mother, Elizabeth, died of cancer. Her absence shook the family’s foundation and then profoundly galvanized her eldest son.
"He realized he was going to put the family on his shoulders. The military was his calling to do that financially," DeRonde’s cousin, Jason Owen, said last night outside the soldier’s family’s apartment on West Side Avenue. "From the time he decided that it was full steam ahead."
But DeRonde was one of two soldiers killed on May 27 when their unit was attacked in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense said today. DeRonde, assigned to the 125th Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss Texas, died in the Wardak District in central Afghanistan.
DeRonde is at least the 44th service member with ties to New Jersey to be killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001. An additional 102 service members from New Jersey have died in Iraq since 2003.
"His life didn’t take hold until he was 22," said Owen, who noted DeRonde sent monthly checks home. "He was really taking the reins, he was ascending. The real tragedy here is from an upbringing that wasn’t so good he was working ... to help his family and to better himself."
DeRonde was born and raised in the city’s Bergen neighborhood. As a child, he kept mostly to himself.
His father, Leroy DeRonde Jr., said he loved playing PlayStation 3 with his brother, Harold, who is now 17.
"The two were inseparable," DeRonde’s father said. He added that since his son’s deployment a year ago, they would talk using the online video chat service Skype.
"If he wasn’t on, my hands would shake," he said. "It’s a terrible thing."
Through the years, and in DeRonde’s short life, the tight-knit family has known both the fear of loss and tragedy.
At 5, Harold was diagnosed with leukemia and given three weeks to live. The family went to Disney World on a Make-A-Wish vacation. It was the only real vacation they ever took together, Leroy DeRonde Jr. said. By luck, Harold survived.
But when their mother died, DeRonde made a plan that required groundwork. He got his GED and then 15 college credits, both of which were required before he could join the Army, which he did in January 2011.
DeRonde, his family said, was kind of person who, when he figured out where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do, nothing could stop him.
After basic training, DeRonde’s family saw him off at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. — as one of a handful of graduates to have been immediately promoted to a Private E2.
"He’d been so quiet, but he knew everyone, they knew his name," his half-sister, Jennifer Owen, said. "In six months, he really came out of his shell."
Funeral arrangements are pending.
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