Carolyn Peirce, The Examiner
2008-03-26 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

On a cruise ship, he laughed and shimmied and showed off his moves — and won the Latin American dance contest, even though he was the only one aboard who spoke English.

Amid the grief and the tears on Tuesday, those closest to Staff Sgt. Collin Bowen, a National Guardsman from Perry Hall who died in Afghanistan, found comfort in remembering his laughter and his life.

They knew he would have wanted it that way.

“Think of Collin dancing in the presence of God,” said Maryland Army National Guard chaplain Samuel Giese, who celebrated the funeral Mass at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Hyattsville.

His three daughters walked behind the casket, draped in an American flag.

Bowen, 38, died March 14 at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio of injuries from a roadside bomb attack Jan. 2 in Afghanistan’s Khowst province, a troubled region on the Pakistani border. He was just weeks from returning home but volunteered to stay for a dangerous mission requiring experienced soldiers.

A crowd of friends and family, many in uniform, knelt in prayer at the morning Mass, attended by Gov. Martin O’Malley.

After the service, Bowen was buried among war heroes at Arlington National Cemetery, fulfilling a lifelong dream to become a soldier and, ultimately, to be honored by being buried in the hallowed burial ground there.

He died just days before the U.S. passed the milestone of 4,000 American casualties in the war in Iraq. But till the end, he harbored no doubts about Operation Enduring Freedom.

“He believed in the cause that our government put us over there for... to bring peace upon such a war-torn area, to bring freedom,” said Maj. Robert Paolucci, who served as Bowen’s company commander from 1992 to 2002.

“I hope his wife can take comfort in that.”

Paolucci recalled Bowen’s sprinting to his family waiting at the finish line when he competed every year in the Army Ten-Miler race in Washington, D.C.

Bowen and his wife, Ursula, have a 3-year-old daughter, Gabriela. Bowen’s two other daughters, Erin, 13, and Katelyn, 11, are from a previous marriage.

“He was one of the finest soldiers I had the privilege of serving with,” said 1st Lt. Christopher Keene, his voice trembling.

“He was a soldier that made other soldiers better.”

Bowen had a “magnetic force” with children in Afghanistan and helped to build roads, schools and water wells, Keene said.

Bowen volunteered in November 2006 to serve in Afghanistan and had completed his term in Operation Enduring Freedom.

But two weeks before returning home, Bowen agreed to stay for one final 10-day mission that claimed his life and three other lives.

Bowen, who was promoted to sergeant first class, was the first Maryland Army National Guard casualty as part of the Afghanistan operation and the seventh Maryland Army National Guardsman to lose his life in support of the war on terrorism.

“For our nation, too, it is hard to say goodbye to a man like Collin Bowen,” Giese said.

cpeirce@baltimorexaminer.com