Casey was on third Iraq tour

By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 6, 2008 at 11:46 p.m.
Updated January 6, 2008 at 11:46 p.m.

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Captain Thomas John Casey was on his third tour of duty in Iraq when he and Maj. Andrew Olmsted were killed in a Jan. 3 ambush.

The two men shared a sense of optimism and purpose about the work they were doing training Iraqi police and military officers, Casey's younger brother said Sunday.

"Tom was so optimistic about the mission," Jeffrey Casey said. "He really believed there was light at the end of the tunnel."

Thomas Casey, 32, was born in Albuquerque, where he attended Catholic school.

As a kid, his favorite television show was "The A-Team". Jeffrey remembers playing soldier with his brother when they each got toy A-Team guns one year for Christmas.

The elder Casey later graduated from the University of New Mexico with a dual degree in Spanish and Portuguese.

He enlisted in the Army and attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Ca., where he studied Korean and met his future wife Leslie, who was also in the Army. The couple married in October 1998.

The couple, had two children Joseph, 3 and Michael, 1. They were living in Dallas when Leslie gave birth to their younger son while they were stuck in traffic on their way to the hospital.

"They had to pull over by the side of the road," Jeffrey Casey recalled. "My brother had to deliver Mikey himself. But that's my brother. If anyone is prepared to step up to the plate, it's him."

After his first two deployments in Iraq, Casey tried to make the transition to civilian life. He tried unsuccessfully to find work the the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Instead he went to work for a Dallas company that builds prefabricated homes.

But the leadership style that worked so well in the military didn't work as well with customers, his brother said. So he re-enlisted with the Army Reserve in Texas and was assigned to training at Fort Riley, Kan., where he met Olmsted.

"Thomas Casey was a soldier who believed that an officer's place was at the front," Master Sergeant Joseph McDuffie wrote in a statement shared with the family. "And that is where you would find him.

"It didn't matter what the task was: leading a convoy to FOB Cobra, searching a suspected house, or throwing a pass during the RSU Nightmare Thanksgiving Day football game; Tom was there. He was also the first to come to the help of a fellow Soldier."

On the family's blog, Leslie Anne Casey wrote:

"Thomas, more than half of me feels like it has been ripped out, and I miss you more than words can express. We all love you babe, take care of yourself up there in heaven."

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