Just fix it

Lori laughed as the baseball pinged off the fence.Rounding 2nd base and then 3rd, she knew she'd make it to home plate.

Her dark hair flying in the wind, she laughed again.

A friendly but fierce competitor, Lori determined to win every time she played and even more than that, to do what was best for the team.

Hitting home plate, her teammates cheered.

Her family whooped!

And she felt loved. Lori's Hopi Indian name is Köcha-Hon-Mana meaning White Bear Girl.

Piestewa, comes from a word meaning "water pooled on the desert by a hard rain."

This fact would bring comfort to her family one day, but neither they nor she knew that on the day she won the baseball game.

"Mom, Dad, I've decided I have to do something.

I have to take care of Brandon and Carla.I can't do it here in town.

There's too much unemployment.

I have joined the Army.

"Lori looked expectantly from one parent to the other.

They knew without speaking the thoughts on the other’s mind.

Both Lori's dad and Grandfather had served.

They knew the security the military offered its members.

Lori and her children deserved a better life.

They also knew of its personal challenges and the ultimate danger.

The year?2003 and it was the Iraqi War Lori went to fight.Lori left behind her beloved children, family and Hopi Nation.

She left Arizona, deployed first to Fort Bragg, TX and then into Nasiriyah, Iraq.Later, in an interview, a comrade spoke of that fateful day in Iraq.

"I asked her to switch places...

We knew the drive back was even more dangerous than the first go round

.She knew she'd be driving us straight into enemy fire.

She maneuvered the Humvee like it was second nature.

I asked her to switch.

She said no.

She was committed to finishing her duty.

Completing her assignment.

That was Lori." As part of a support unit of clerks, cooks, and repair personnel, they first got lost through the dry torrid, desert in Southern Iraq.

Then they were ambushed.

The Army called what hit them as "a torrent of fire.

"At first it looked like Lori might out maneuver the enemy fire.

She even stopped to help out two other vehicles with soldiers... as was their duty.

By their very nature, this Unit was a support unit... their mission: repair.

Their motto "Just Fix It."However, a large grenade propelled by a rocket exploded into the driver's side of the Humvee that Lori drove.

Three other soldiers died on the scene.

Lori suffered a head injury and was taken as a prisoner of war.

Back in Arizona when the news of the attack on her Unit and the captured soldiers aired, the citizens, family and friends put up signs declaring:

"Put your porch light on, show Lori the way home.

" As they waited out the long days and nights to hear any news of her, they even spelled her name on a hillside with stones outside her hometown.

Tragically, White Bear Girl, Lori Piestwa, died of her injuries.

She was the first woman in the U.S. armed forces killed in the 2003 Iraq war and is the first Native American woman to die in combat while serving with the U.S. military.

Honored in many ways, from the coveted Purple Heart and Prisoner of War Medal, posthumously promoted from Private First Class to Specialist, to monuments, highways, and memorials throughout the U.S., Lori fulfilled her duty with the ultimate sacrifice.

In the Hopi tradition, the souls of the dead return to earth in a different form.

Not as angels but as moisture from the sky.Not long after she died, in the hot desert of Iraq, it snowed in April in Lori's home town of Tuba City, Arizona.

As her last name means "water pooled on the desert by a hard rain" her family believes that this snowfall was White Bear Girl's spirit bringing them a message of peace.

She had returned to them after all...

she always did what she said she would do.

She came home.

Wow, I hope that today you catch the determination of White Bear Girl. She loved and lived with principle and belief in doing the right thing.

I know that it is tempting sometimes to take the easy way out or to find a short cut.However living with yourself when you've cheated yourself can be very tough.

I know Lori would probably agree with me when I say, to the best of your ability, "Just fix it."

Do it the right way and you'll never go wrong.

Lori believed in her Army family as much as she believed in her own children...

I want you to know that you can do whatever you have to do today.