Quest to Heal Iraqi Boy Became a Final Mission

"Here's the hard part: funding," she wrote. "We are penniless here. No budget, no pot of gold." As soldiers, they were barred from soliciting money directly, she explained. "But we CAN make people aware of this child, SO if you know persons that are interested in saving this child, the magic number is $8,000 USD. Yup. That'll do it."

Freeman spent the next few months collecting medical records and contacting charity organizations. His wife, Charlotte, helped out, making calls and sending e-mails.

Freeman e-mailed the chairman of Gift of Life International, a New York-based nonprofit organization that connects low-income children suffering from serious heart ailments with top-notch hospitals. Cases that originate in Iraq are among the toughest the foundation tackles because errands that are complicated anywhere have become an odyssey in Iraq.

Freeman had to get Ali Abdulameer's medical records to doctors in New York and apply for U.S. visas at the consulate in Amman. The Iraqis had to obtain new passports with enhanced security features now required for visa applicants from the Middle East. And they had to provide documentation to prove that the child was stable enough for the 13-hour flight to New York.

Gradually, the pieces began coming together. Schneider Children's Hospital in New York agreed to perform the operation at a reduced fee and Gift of Life took the case.

"A child is a common dominator between all of us," said Robert Donno, Gift of Life chairman. "The person in Iraq and the person in Amman and the person in New Jersey understand what this child means to his father."

Freeman sent a flurry of e-mails each week to get status reports and answer questions. He mailed medical records, set up appointments and helped with passport and visa errands.

Before heading to California for a vacation in December, Freeman stopped by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, left his home phone number and personal e-mail and asked the embassy officials who had been tracking the case to keep him updated.

He returned to Karbala in January. Near the end of the week of Jan. 14, he checked in with Satryano. He always was positive and polite, she said, but they both worried that a problem with the visa application that might set them back several weeks, while Ali Abdulameer's condition deteriorated.

"We had been touching base all week," Satryano said. "How's it going, how's it going? You know how bugs in the summer call to each other."

Freeman's time in Iraq made him reexamine what he wanted to do with his life, friends said. He thought about going to graduate school after finishing his tour and talked of starting a nonprofit organization to get Iraqi children medical care abroad. "Vets for Kids," they could call it, he told a fellow soldier. His eagerness to help Ali Abdulameer, a boy he never met, was an effort to make meaningful contributions in a devastated country.

"It may have started with a program we saw on Doctors Without Borders," his wife, Charlotte, said in a telephone interview. "He was very moved by the fact that these people went to dangerous situations and helped out, and their philosophy was that's how you let people around the world know there are good people who will help. That was his vision."