By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

It was the phone call that never came.

U.S. Army medic and former Carl Junction resident Sgt. Paul F. Brooks had called his wife, Nicole, on May 20 to tell her he had gotten his first mission on his second tour to Iraq. It was going to be dangerous.

“I told him that whenever he got home, to call me, and he kept saying that it’s going to be the middle of the night and that I didn’t really want him to call me then,” said Nicole Brooks, 29, in a telephone interview Thursday. “Of course, he never called.”

Paul, 34, died in that mission on May 21. His Army unit was patrolling near an outdoor market in Baghdad’s southern Dora district when a bomb exploded, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Two of his fellow soldiers — Maj. Jason E. George, 38, of Tehachapi, Calif., and 1st Lt. Leevi K. Barnard, 28, of Mount Airy, N.C. — also died in the explosion.

“I woke up knowing — just sick to my stomach,” Nicole said of realizing her husband didn’t call.

The next day, as she unloaded her groceries, two men in military dress uniforms stepped out of their car.

“Paul was always sending his buddies over to talk with me and check on me, but I focused on their faces and didn’t know them,” Nicole said. “Then I saw they were wearing their dress greens and everyday soldiers don’t. I thought, ‘No, no, maybe it’s something else.’ I didn’t want to think that.

“But as soon as they asked me to sit down, I lost it,” she said.

Her husband was laid to rest in Springfield on Saturday.

It has been difficult for Nicole and the couple’s children. Nicole said her oldest son, Cody, 10, Paul’s stepson, was hysterical when he heard the news. Paul and Nicole’s oldest son, Logan, 7, also took the news hard.

“He and his dad were close,” Nicole said. “The little ones don’t really understand what’s going on.”

Paul and Nicole also have Aiden, 6, Samara, 4, and Denver, 2, together. Paul also has two other children, Haley, 14, and Seth, 9.

Denver needed lifesaving surgery as a newborn to fix a hole in his heart. The Missouri Veterans Commission formed “Operation Baby’s Heart” to help pay for costs associated with the surgery.

“He’s doing wonderfully,” Nicole said of Denver, two years after his surgery. “He is strong. He is perfect. You wouldn’t know that there was ever anything wrong with him.”

Paul returned to the United States for Denver’s surgery two years ago, and shortly after that, the whole family moved to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., so Paul could finish out his active-duty term with his wife and children. But Paul decided to re-enlist.

“He decided this was what he wanted to do, so of course, I supported him,” Nicole said. “There was of course, the ‘I don’t want you to go,’ but I guess I looked at it like we’re a military family, so we can get through anything.”

Paul was deployed to Baghdad for a second tour of duty May 5, 2009. It happened sooner than either expected, Nicole said, but the 1/252 Combined Arms Battalion of the 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team needed a medic. Paul stepped up to the challenge.

“I have so much pride because he died doing what he loved,” Nicole said. “I love him so much, and I’m so proud of everything he did.”

Nicole said she and her children will probably move back to the Joplin area to be close to her father and brother who live in Webb City. She could stay on the military base for another year, but said it is too hard to stay there without Paul. Paul’s family in Jonesboro, Ark., also has offered a place to stay, but Nicole said she wants to be back in Joplin, where she said she and Paul built their lives together. Her son, Cody, also lives in the Joplin area and she wants to be close to him.

“My kids are what are keeping me strong,” she said.

Nicole said she decided to bury Paul in Springfield so he could be close to both his family and her family.

“I definitely wanted to keep him close,” she said. “I promised him that I’d never let his kids forget him. And I won’t. So we’ll definitely go see him, talk about him and remember how important he was to us.”



‘Hero’

“I’m so proud of the man that he was, the husband and daddy he became, and the hero he was destined to be,” said Nicole Brooks of her husband, Sgt. Paul F. Brooks, an Army medic and former Carl Junction resident, who died in Iraq May 21.