Shattered future ’We didn’t have enough time’

By Katya Cengel kcengel@courier-journal.com

Forty-five minutes before he boarded a helicopter for Baghdad International Airport and a flight back to Fort Carson, Colo., Army Spc. Brian Penisten called his fiancée, Johnna Loia.

"The last words he said were, ’I love you and I’ll see you soon, Mrs. Penisten,’" remembers Loia.

Five days later, on Nov. 7, 2003, the pair planned to marry in secret in Loia’s hometown of Pueblo, Colo. Then they were going to go to Penisten’s hometown of Fort Wayne, Ind., to surprise his family.

The couple had planned a huge family wedding for May but hadn’t told their families about the small wedding planned for Penisten’s two-week furlough.

But Penisten never made it off the helicopter. It was shot down by a surface-to-air-missile, killing him and 14 others. He was 28.

’He was coming home to marry me’

Although the couple had known each other only a little over a year, their relationship had progressed rapidly. Now Loia, who works at a hotel in Victor, Colo., is glad.

"Everything in our relationship went really fast," says Loia, who is 26. "And I’m so glad it did because we just didn’t have enough time."

The couple met at a Colorado Springs nightclub in September 2002. At the time, Penisten was stationed at Fort Carson and Loia was living about an hour away in Pueblo. The next day they had their first date. The day after that, they moved in together, Loia says.

"Both of us knew the second we saw each other our search was over," she says. "We had found that person."

On their first date, after learning they shared the same favorite football team, Loia says Penisten promised to buy them season tickets to the Indianapolis Colts when he got out of the Army. A week later, he asked Loia to come home with him to Fort Wayne for Christmas.

It was the first time a man had asked her to meet his family, she says, and she was nervous the whole 23 hours it took the couple to drive there. They spent two weeks with Penisten’s parents, John and Mona Penisten, and Brian’s son from a previous relationship, Trevor Penisten, now 5.

"He wanted her to intertwine with Trevor before they decided to get married," John Penisten remembers. "And it worked out beautifully."

It was in part for Trevor that Brian Penisten joined the Army four years ago, his mother says.

"He knew that by joining the service he could provide for his son and get himself an education," recalls Mona Penisten. "He was just making a man of himself and coming home to be the daddy he needed to be."

Penisten was set to finish his four-year Army enlistment this past summer. He already had figured out that he and his new wife would move to the Fort Wayne area and was making arrangements for a place for them to live, his mother says. Mona Penisten was excited about Brian and Loia’s relationship and was happy they planned to live nearby.

"They just seemed so in love, it was really neat," she recalls.

But in February 2003, he was told he would be going to Iraq, and that April 7 he was told his plane would leave in two days. He proposed to Loia that day, and she accepted. Loia says they thought of getting married right then but in the end decided against it.

"We always considered ourselves to be married," she remembers. "We said we didn’t need a piece of paper to say we are married."

That is just one of the things she wishes she had done differently. Another is telling him how much she was suffering without him and asking him to get permission to come home. If she hadn’t asked him to come home, she believes, he wouldn’t have been on the helicopter and maybe he would still be alive.

"He was coming home to marry me," Loia says, her soft voice cracking with emotion. "So many guilty feelings I have."

While he was deployed, she worried constantly, and says she lost more than 30 pounds because of her unhappiness.

"I kept thinking to myself everything is too perfect, something is going to happen."

And on Nov. 2, it did. The CH-47 Chinook helicopter Brian Penisten was riding in was shot down in Al Fallujah, Iraq. Loia says one of the soldiers who survived the crash told her Penisten was carrying a ring with him. A wedding ring for her. She’s never seen it; the ring didn’t survive the crash.

But Penisten’s dog tags did, and Loia says she hasn’t taken them off since the day they were given to her at his memorial service at Fort Carson. At his funeral in Indiana, she received a flag, something usually reserved for wives and mothers. She also was assigned an Army casualty assistance officer, also usually reserved for immediate family.

"The military was very good to me," she says.

Still, Loia says the lack of formal recognition from the military hurts.

"I feel they do recognize the wives and mothers and fathers and just because I’m his fiancé doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt as much," she says. "Or that I don’t love him as much."

Loia says she once promised Penisten she would wait for him, even if it meant forever. She says she plans to keep that promise and that while she may fall in love again, she will not marry. She says she wants to be buried with his dog tags hanging from her neck.

Although she has tried to move on, getting a new job, moving to a new town and managing to gain back some of the weight she lost, Loia still suffers from her fiancé’s death.

"It’s a big void in her life," says John Penisten.

She continues to keep in touch with the Penistens through cards, which she sends to both Brian’s parents and his son. And every day she gazes at the dog tags that still hang from her neck, something not everyone understands.

"People get very upset with me. They don’t know what it’s like. They didn’t lose what I lost," she says.

"I lived and breathed for him."

http://www.courier-journal.com/features/2004/10/17/forgotten3.html