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2001 Canarsie High School Graduate Killed In Iraq
The following is reprinted with the permission of the Orlando Sentinel where the article first appeared on January 4, 2005. By Kevin Spear Sentinel Staff Writer When they reached the United States, Haitian immigrants Joseph and Daniela LeBrun had one goal: Their children would go to college and have a chance to live the American dream. But in 2003, two sons dropped out of college to join the Army, telling their parents they thought it was their patriotic duty. Jeff was sent to Iraq and elder brother Stanley to Korea. On Saturday, the LeBruns learned Specialist Jeff LeBrun had been killed in Baghdad when his military vehicle struck an improvised explosive device. He was 21 years old. “I wanted him to have a good life,” cafeteria worker Daniela LeBrun, 47, of Kissimmee said Monday. “I didn’t want him to have the same job as I have now.” Joseph LeBrun, 50, said Army representatives told him his son was driving to a hospital when the explosion occurred. LeBrun was assigned to the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), based in Fort Drum, NY. “He was a really, really, really sweet, sweet young man,” Daniela LeBrun said. “I am lost now.” Monday evening, the LeBruns were waiting for Pvt. 1st Class Stanley LeBrun, 24, to arrive in Orlando from Korea, where he is stationed. The LeBruns have two other children — a son, 13, and a 15-year-old daughter. When Jeff LeBrun quit his computer studies to join the Army, he confided to a family friend that he also wanted to ease the strain on his parents. His father, a painter, has an ailing back after years of work as a welder, and his mother makes sandwiches at the Orlando Sentinel cafeteria. On January 3, the Pentagon announced LeBrun was one of the first U.S. troops to die in Iraq this year. Jeff LeBrun’s family and friends understood he was not in a combat area. He told them he was a computer specialist, who focused on satellite communications and stayed clear of fighting. “He told me he…wasn’t going to be involved in battles,” said Ketty Em-manuel, 50, who has thought of LeBrun as a son since shortly after the family arrived in New York from Haiti in 1986. “Though I knew better, that’s what I wanted to believe,” said Emmanuel, who lives with her family in Brooklyn. However, Emmanuel’s daughter, Lyssandre, 22, learned Wednesday (January 5) in an exchange of e-mails that her lifelong friend was in a danger zone. “I know you’re going to be mad at me because I’m not at a desk job anymore,” LeBrun wrote. “I’m going out in the field.” The Emmanuels met the LeBrun family at a Seventh-day Adventist Church in Brooklyn. Emmanuel watched LeBrun grow up to become a typical American boy without an accent, speaking Creole at home and always careful to mind his parents. To Daniela LeBrun that was simply her son’s nature “Jeff never said no to mommy and never said no to daddy,” she said. The LeBrun family moved to Kissimmee in June 2002 to escape the cold of New York, which seemed alien compared to the heat of their Caribbean homeland. By then, however, the family had experienced the trauma of the attack on the World Trade Center, an event that Jeff LeBrun would cite eventually when he explained to stunned family members his decision to join the Army. LeBrun and his brother Stanley stayed in New York for university classes but visited Kissimmee often. “The last time I saw him, he picked me up at the [Orlando] airport in June,” Emmanuel said. “He was on a short leave before going to Iraq.” Jeff LeBrun had promised his parents he would return to school for his degree as soon as he left the Army. His older brother had already earned his degree, studying while stationed in Korea. Lyssandre Emmanuel said she told Jeff LeBrun not to join the Army. But LeBrun went his own way, respectful of others and confident in himself, she said. “You know how there are the kinds of guys who are cool by making jokes at the expense of others,” Emmanuel said. “He wasn’t like that. He was just a regular cool guy.” ©2005 Orlando Sentinel
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