Abingdon Paratrooper Enlisted in Response to 9/11 Attacks, Family Says

Spec. Ari D. Brown-Weeks, a Maryland resident who died Monday in a vehicle crash near Baghdad, was among the legion of U.S. military fighters who enlisted in part because of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Brown-Weeks, 23, who grew up in western Massachusetts and later moved to Abingdon, was "greatly upset" by the attacks, according to Justin Duncan, his former soccer coach at Pioneer Valley Regional School in Northfield, Mass.

He began to ask Duncan, a Vietnam veteran, about military service. "I gave him the straight answer, not the answer those recruiters give," Duncan said yesterday.

Brown-Weeks joined the Army in May 2006 and was a radio operator for the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade. Stationed in Fort Bragg, N.C., he was deployed soon after his marriage to Ashley Tillery of Abingdon, in northeastern Maryland.

He and his comrades were returning from a raid with three detainees when their truck veered off an elevated highway and rolled over, a military spokeswoman said. Two of the detainees were also killed, and 10 soldiers and a detainee were injured, she said.

Two of the other soldiers who were killed in the crash helped write a New York Times op-ed article, published last month, that was sharply critical of the Pentagon's assessment of the Iraq war.

Brown-Weeks's father, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, told the Republican newspaper in Greenfield, Mass., that the terrorist attacks of 2001 influenced his son's decision to enlist. "He believed they were fighting terrorists there so they won't come here," Jon Weeks was quoted as saying. "He did believe that. But he also could see first-hand that a lot of what was going on wasn't working."

Duncan said that it was painful to learn that Brown-Weeks had died in the war but that "he was the type of kid who would be proud to serve like that."

In those conversations years ago, Duncan said, "I told him that my attitude is that this war could be just like Vietnam. It's not necessary."

Jon Weeks and Karyn Brown, of Leyden, Mass., learned of their son's death Monday evening, said Todd Sumner, headmaster at the Academy at Charlemont in Massachusetts, where Weeks is the conductor of music ensembles. On Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of the attacks, students at the school observed two moments of silence -- one in the morning in memory of the attacks, and another at the end of the day for their teacher's son.

"All of the students were asking where Jon was," Sumner said. "This was a moment of solidarity."