FORT DRUM — The lives of two 10th Mountain Division soldiers killed in action were remembered in a memorial held on post Thursday afternoon.

Sgt. Jose J. Reyes, 24, of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, and Staff Sgt. Daniel A. Rodriguez, 28, Baltimore, were killed July 18 when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device in Ghazni City, Afghanistan. The two were heavy-vehicle drivers with the 110th Transportation Company, 548th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 10th Sustainment Brigade.

Pfc. Crystal Mize, who served in the company with Sgt. Reyes, described her fellow soldier as a caring friend who put others before himself. She said the last time she spoke to him was two days before he died.

“It’s true what they say: our fingerprints never fade from the lives we touch,” Pfc. Mize said.

Staff Sgt. Raffinee Adams, a squad leader who served over Staff Sgt. Rodriguez, praised him for his leadership and compassion for his fellow soldiers. As one example of his character, she described a moment when he corrected a senior officer who had been mispronouncing a subordinate’s name as a joke.

“He was truly, what we like to say, what right looks like,” she said.

Describing Staff Sgt. Rodriguez as a man of faith, she held back tears as she recounted a Facebook post she sent to him on the day he died in which she congratulated him on the pinning of his eternal wings upon his arrival in heaven.

Prior to the brigade’s current deployment, Staff Sgt. Rodriguez had deployed twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan.

Several members of both soldiers’ families attended the ceremony.

Sgt. Reyes’s wife, Neydie Gomez, said she was taking her husband’s loss on a “day-by-day” basis.

“It’s just so many mixed emotions,” she said. “It’s still sinking in.”

Fort Drum was their first duty station; they arrived here a few months after he joined the Army in February 2010. She said her husband was very funny as well as a devoted father to their two children, Damian, 6, and Damianis, 8 months old. He could often be found playing and watching cartoons with his children.

“He’d be like another 6-year-old with them,” she said.

Staff Sgt. Rodriguez’s wife, Tiffanie, standing next to her three children, said that in the past few weeks she had not had “any good night’s sleep.”

The previous night she said she awoke suddenly during a jarring dream in which her husband returned to their backyard twice, once by helicopter, then again by jet plane. During the dream, her husband could communicate only by blinking.

“I was telling him, ‘I’m sorry ... I love you ... I’m going to take care of you for the rest of your life,’” Mrs. Rodriguez said.

She described her husband as a family man whose personality made him well-liked by the people he met.

“He just always had the right thing to say,” Mrs. Rodriguez said.

Staff Sgt. Rodriguez has been honored locally in the past month and was buried in Brookside Cemetery in late July. Mrs. Rodriguez said she was grateful for the support she and her family had received.

“I can honestly say my breath was taken away,” she said. “It was just shocking to me.”

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer