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Previous Coverage: GI's death divides a family

After LI man died in Iraq, a fight ensued over his insurance and questions arose over how he was killed

BY GRAHAM RAYMAN | Newsday Staff Writer

March 26, 2006

   First in an occasional series that examines how families cope when a loved one is killed in combat.

   On Oct. 8, 2004, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. James Pettaway Jr. was buried in Southampton, his extended family gathered around the casket to mourn the fallen soldier's passing.

   There was Pettaway's uncle Winson and Winson's wife, Barbara. In James' youth, Uncle Winson had acted as a stand-in for the father who had played a minor role in his son's upbringing. He was also the man James had chosen to manage his finances if he died in Iraq.

   There was Pettaway's ex-wife, Maureen, and the couple's son, Brandon, 12. And there was James' aunt Evelyn Taylor, a retired hospital cook who played a central role in raising Pettaway during his high school years, after his mother had died.

   To the hundreds of mourners who turned out to honor a warrior's life and death, the family seemed united in grief over the death of the sweet-natured, physically imposing soldier from injuries sustained a month earlier on a dark roadside in war-torn Iraq. The truth underlying their loss was far more complicated.

   As the war in Iraq enters its fourth year, Pettaway's death is a pointed reminder of the struggles 17 families from Long Island and at least 2,315 nationwide have endured. To these families, beyond the grieving, each death presents unique repercussions and aftershocks.

   For the Pettaways, the death shattered any semblance of unity in the family and also placed them at odds with the U.S. Army, which initially said James had been killed by an IED - the murderous improvised explosive devices planted by insurgents to kill and maim American soldiers.

   Months later, the family would learn he had been fatally wounded in a vehicle accident and that some soldiers had unknowingly driven by his burning vehicle without stopping to help.

   An official Army report into Pettaway's death that laid out the circumstances revealed a night of panic and turmoil, when the mundane and the terrifying existed simultaneously. But it did not answer all the family's questions: They say they still don't believe they have the full story about the chain of events that claimed James' life. The Army said it learned from the mistakes the day of the accident and instituted changes on the ground to improve communications.

   Pettaway's death triggered a bitter dispute between Winson and Maureen over James' $250,000 life insurance policy that wound up in court. Their lawsuit is believed to be only the second filed during the Iraq war over a soldier's death benefit. Complicating their dispute was that the Army could not find Pettaway's will, or determine for certain that he had written one.

   Last month, a federal judge did what the family couldn't do and settled their legal dispute over the insurance.

   More than 15 months after the death, the family remains fractured.

   "It's all been very painful to me," said Taylor, 65. "Every day I have heartache. Sometimes I talk to James, and I say, 'Look what has happened.'"

   Big in size - and personality

   James Pettaway dominates his uncle's Southampton living room. His photographs and a vase with his name written in Arabic decorate a glass cabinet. A framed, folded flag leans against a wall on the top of a large screen television.

   Pettaway could fill a room, not only with his size - 6 feet tall and 236 pounds - but also with his personality. He loved his son, his family, Black-and-Mild cigars, which he often held unlit in his mouth, and home-cooked meals.

   "Oh, he ate a lot at Thanksgiving," Winson Pettaway said, laughing at the memory at his kitchen table. "He'd lay on the couch and sleep for about two hours, or go out and shoot baskets with the kids. He was like a big grown kid himself."

   There are two Southamptons. One is composed of mansions and manicured lawns, boutiques and restaurants. The other is home to those who clean the mansions and cut those lawns, who staff those shops and serve that food.

   James Pettaway grew up in the second Southampton, the son of divorced parents and raised by a committee of relatives; a youth who excelled in high school basketball but had trouble finding his way until he joined the military.

   The Rev. Henry Faison Jr., who delivered Pettaway's eulogy, put it this way: "A lot of people make money in the summer, but there aren't that many year-round jobs. James saw himself leaving just as everyone else does."