Md. Man Who Was Eager to Lead Is Killed in Combat

John Ryan Dennison, 24, was promoted posthumously to captain. He had been in Iraq since summer. (AP)

John Ryan Dennison was a shining light in the Class of 2000 at Urbana High School in Frederick County -- an excellent student, a football player, a wrestler. Yesterday, the school's teachers and administrators reeled from the news that he was killed Wednesday in Iraq.

"When you lose a young life, it somehow diminishes all of us," said Principal George M. Seaton.

History teacher Norm Crosby, who wrote a recommendation in support of Dennison's application to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said he was a natural leader. "He was a young man who always knew the right thing to do, whether that was cracking a joke or calling attention to something. He had a presence about him," he said.

A 2004 graduate of the academy, Dennison, 24, was killed by small-arms fire during combat operations in Diyala Province. A first lieutenant who was promoted posthumously to captain, Dennison served in the 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. He had been in Iraq since the summer.

"Capt. Dennison was a superb young officer and warrior. He led from the front in all that he did," Col. Bryan Owens, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, said in a statement.

Dennison -- of Ijamsville, southeast of the town of Frederick -- came from a military family. He married a fellow West Point graduate, 1st Lt. Haley Dennison, who has been serving in Afghanistan. In an e-mail yesterday, she declined to comment, saying she was "still in Afghanistan awaiting a flight home to try to put my life together."

John Dennison, his father, told the Associated Press that he met his wife, Shannon, when they were serving with the Army in Germany, where they adopted their first son, known in the military as John and by his family, teachers and friends as Ryan. The Dennisons also have a daughter, Colleen, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, and another son, Christopher, a college student.

His father told the AP that Dennison was eager to serve in Iraq. "He wanted to lead troops and felt that's what he had been trained to do and wanted to go do it," he said.

Crosby said that Dennison had great promise. "I kidded him that I'd see him on the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Crosby remembers his former student as "someone who had taken a fairly conservative point of view on a lot of things and as being willing to listen, but always coming back to his beliefs. He'd stand his ground."

Chemistry teacher Michelle Shearer said Dennison's smiling personality had a magnetic quality. "There isn't anybody who didn't like Ryan Dennison," she said.

Dennison was the third West Point graduate with ties to Maryland to die in the Iraq conflict. More than 50 Marylanders have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Members of Dennison's immediate family could not be reached yesterday. Neighbors said they had gone to meet the body at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

At the family home, yellow bows were tied around the trunks of two trees in the front yard, their branches bared of leaves by winter's approach. The wind wound a U.S. flag around a pole jutting from the house, along with several banners.

Two said Army, one said Navy, and a fourth, a bit tattered, said Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Staff researchers Robert Thomason and Meg Smith contributed to this report.