Enterprise-Journal
Yolanda Wagner lost who she calls the perfect son on Thursday, when U.S. Army Sgt. Taurean Travantí Harris of Liberty was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.
“Ever there was such a thing I had it,” Wagner said Saturday from Chicago.
The Department of Defense announced Saturday that Harris, 22, died in Kala Gush from wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.
Wagner, who was visiting her mother in Chicago when she heard the news, said she had just talked to her son on the phone the day before. Harris reminded her to buy gifts for his daughter, who turned 22 months old on Friday.
“Everything he did was for her,” she said.
The news has devastated her family.
“I’m not doing good at all. All I can do is cry and it hurts so bad. But I’ve got to be strong because I have three other kids and three other grandkids,” she said.
Wagner said she knew few details surrounding her son’s death.
The Department of Defense said Harris was assigned to the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion, 513th Military Intelligence Brigade based at Fort Gordon, Ga.
Harris’ unit left for Afghanistan in early December and was due back in March 2008. Wagner said he had only been home once since he left, around his birthday, April 29.
Although Harris had initially been trained in electrical engineering, Wagner said she was unsure of her son’s exact duties in Afghanistan. She said her son talked little about what he did, and she figured he was trying to prevent her from worrying.
But she still worried, especially when he first deployed.
“I was very upset,” she said.
Throughout her son’s military career he always told her not to worry about him, saying “You know your son’s a soldier.”
The last time she saw him, when he briefly returned home, she said he had looked so good and sounded so positive that she convinced herself that he was going to return home safely.
She said it seems unfair that when she felt the most optimistic, the worst has happened.
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To Wagner, her son was as close to perfect as possible.
“I want the world to know what I lost, because I lost a beautiful child,” she said.
She said Harris’ level head always kept him from trouble, and he stayed motivated throughout school. “He was never a problem,” she said.
He excelled in JROTC at Amite County High School, racking up scores of achievement certificates and earning its highest honors before graduating in 2003.
Maj. David Terrell, who instructed Harris for four years, said Harris was one of the finer men in Amite County, and Terrell keeps wishing the tragic news was just a nightmare.
“You just don’t find too many young men like him,” he said.
He said Harris was the type of student who always answered “yes sir” or “no sir,” and he was a great role model.
“I got in ROTC just to be in there with him,” his brother William Harris said.
Wagner said her son could never keep his hands off the appliances around the house and he tinkered with anything electrical, from ceiling fans to televisions.
“He always thought he could hook up everything,” said Wagner.
He enlisted in the Army right after he graduated from high school.
In 2004, Harris graduated from a utilities equipment repair course at a Maryland base. His mother said he later repaired electrical equipment, including air conditioning and refrigeration systems at a base in El Paso, Texas.
“I was very proud,” Wagner said, adding that her son’s discipline was fit for the military.
In 2005, his daughter Tiana was born. Wagner said Tiana’s mother, Joni Poleder of Lake Charles, La., who is also stationed overseas with the Army, will attend the funeral.
Arrangements are incomplete at Craft Funeral Home of McComb.
Wagner said after her son was stationed at Fort Gordon for a matter of weeks before he received word of his deployment to Afghanistan.
Despite the distance, she said she kept in regular contact with Harris by phone or e-mail. Harris told her he’d be back home in four months, Wagner said.
“He told me he was gong to be home for Christmas,” she said.
Wagner said Harris had plans to buy a home in Augusta, Ga., where he was going to raise Tiana and take electrical engineering classes after his discharge.
Harris also leaves three siblings, William, 20, Justin Davis, 17, and Tara Cockerham, 25, all of Liberty. Harris’ father, Cecil Harris, lives in Tucson, Ariz.
She said his body should arrive in the United States by this week.
Terrell, now principal of Amite County High School, said there will be a moment of silence on Monday, the first day of school, and other memorial plans are pending.
A Fort Gordon spokesman said there also would be a memorial for Harris at the base.
Harris was the second sergeant in his unit to die in combat in Afghanistan. In 2004, Sgt. Carri Gasiewicz was killed by an improvised explosive device.
As of Saturday, at least 353 members of the U.S. military had died as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.
