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Balcon felt he was born to be a soldier

Ivan Moreno, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 15, 2007 at midnight

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COLORADO SPRINGS - A few years ago, 19-year-old Dane Balcon was told he wasn't strong enough to carry a rifle.

Balcon shrugged off the comment.

"That didn't discourage him. It only made him more determined," said Chief Master Sgt. Ben Brown, one of Balcon's high school ROTC instructors in Colorado Springs.

"He said he felt like he was born and bred to live a military life," Brown said.

Balcon, killed in Balad, Iraq, on Sept. 5 by a roadside bomb, was buried Friday afternoon at Fort Logan National Cemetery. He was deployed in July.

The 2006 Sand Creek High School graduate is the 60th soldier who either grew up in or lived in Colorado for some time before dying in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Going to catch bin Laden

Earlier in the day, under the light gray sky of a cold morning, hundreds of people walked up the steps into the Cadet Protestant Chapel at the Air Force Academy to remember Balcon.

Junior ROTC members from the Air Force and Army lined the steps, wearing the military attire Balcon wore not too along ago.

Balcon's mother, Carla Sizer, stoically walked between them up the steps.

Sizer, a captain with the Air Force who teaches at the academy's management department, last week recalled what her son told her before his departure to Iraq.

"You know what he told me? That he was going to go there and he was going to catch Osama Bin Laden," she said.

Balcon was 3-years-old when he told his mother he wanted to be a soldier. Sixteen years later, he tattooed that word on one of his arms before going to Iraq.

Balcon, who was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, was supposed to go to Iraq in June, not July. But he was bumped from his flight by a higher-ranking officer.

"He was truly frustrated," Brown said. "I think because he felt his mission was in jeopardy."

"Dane finally made it to Iraq," Brown continued, "and on September 5, 2007, the gates of heaven opened up and God, the keeper of the master plan, said, 'Dane Rodrigo Balcon, mission complete. Welcome home.' "

'Ranger Balcon'

Pfc. Jeremiah Harmon and Pfc. Roy Curtis, who served with Balcon in Iraq, said in an e-mail they "used to call him 'Ranger Balcon' because he was one of the most 'Hooah' soldiers," in their cavalry.

"But also one of the most kind hearted," they wrote.

During the memorial service, Pfc. Balcon was posthumously promoted to specialist and awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.



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