Funeral will be held Thursday for Brett Wallace Thorpe, 44, who died of a heart attack on May 29 while guarding the president of Afghanistan.
The service is planned for the Enoch, Iron County, LDS Stake Center chapel, starting 11 a.m. He is to be buried with military honors in Tonaquint Cemetery, St. George, that afternoon.
Thorpe, a resident of Enoch who was born in San Diego, retired from the Army in 1999. He had been a sergeant first class in the First Special Forces Group Airborne, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., and had earned the Soldier's Medal for heroism.
At the time of his death, he was a bodyguard for the new Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. He was a civilian working for contractor DynCorp. The company is based in Reston, Va., and provides support services for government and commercial customers.
After America overthrew the Taliban and cleared al-Qaida terrorists from Afghanistan in 2001, Karzai became president. DynCorp provided security for him under a State Department contract.
Thorpe left Utah in October 2002 for his assignment protecting Karzai, said his wife, Jeannie, contacted by telephone on Tuesday.
He loved his work in Afghanistan, believing it was an important duty for the United States. "He was the most patriotic man I've ever met," she said.
"He would do anything for anybody." Her late husband was generous to a fault, she added.
Speaking of his duties guarding the new president of that strife-torn country, she added, "I couldn't be more proud."
His friend, Don Ayala, a resident of Los Angeles, escorted Thorpe's body home from Afghanistan. The sad homecoming was Monday night.
Ayala was there when Thorpe died in the town of Gazni, about 85 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul. Karzai was on a visit to Gazni, and Thorpe, Ayala and others were guarding him.
A large crowd "was excited to see the president," said Ayala. "They were getting out of hand and jumping onto the vehicle, so they had us dismount from the other vehicles and surround the limo, and run with it as it ran through the town."
They ran beside the vehicle's fenders, protecting Karzai.
After running a little more than half a mile, they arrived at Karzai's next stop, a girls school. As they stopped, both Thorpe and Ayala turned to watch the sector for which they were responsible, and Thorpe immediately fell.
"We have a medic on the team who exerted himself for over an hour just trying to resuscitate him and could not bring back a pulse," Ayala said. Thorpe was in full cardiac arrest when he fell.
When he was checked later, an examiner determined he had died of a heart attack. He had not shown any symptoms of heart disease "all the time I had been there with him," said Ayala.
Before leaving for Afghanistan, Thorpe was a junior majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry at Southern Utah University, Cedar City. He and Jeannie Thorpe are parents of two sons, Christopher Brett and Brandon Joseph Thorpe.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com