Pvt. Thanh Tran serves as an honor guard while soldiers line up to salute their fallen comrade, Spc. Curtis L. Wooten, during a memorial service Wednesday at Ledward chapel in Schweinfurt, Germany. Wooten died when a roadside bomb exploded Jan. 4 near the armored Humvee in which he was riding as the gunner in Iraq. (Kristen Chandler Toth / Courtesy of U.S. Army)
Spc. Curtis L. Wooten lived the Army life, from his birth to soldier parents at Fort Riley, Kan., in 1984, to his own enlistment during the war on terrorism 18 years later.
He died a soldier, too, when a roadside bomb exploded Jan. 4 in Iraq near the armored Humvee in which he was riding as the gunner.
“I feel pride in his service because he followed what I did,” his father, Curtis Wooten Sr., a Persian Gulf War veteran from Junction City, Kan., told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper last weekend. “But it sucks that it ends this way.”
Dozens of friends gathered Wednesday at the Ledward Barracks chapel in Schweinfurt, Germany, to remember Wooten, 20, of the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment, four days after his buddies paid tribute to him in a service at a base near Balad, Iraq.
Wooten followed his parents to Army bases around the world until he was 10. Then they divorced and he went to live with his mother, Dairyene, in Spanaway, Wash.
After graduating from high school in 2002, he joined the Army to get money for college. He hoped to run his own video production company someday, his father told the Post-Intelligencer.
Wooten trained as a tanker at Fort Knox, Ky., and joined the 1-77 Armor on Jan. 7, 2003. Thirteen months later, the unit deployed to Iraq as an infantry battalion, leaving most of its armored vehicles in Germany.
His unit had joined in Operation Baton Rouge, the liberation of Samarra in late September, and he had just returned to Iraq after spending two weeks at home with his family at Christmas.
In eulogies read at Wednesday’s service, members of his unit remembered Wooten as a man who was quick with a quip.
“Wooten always made me laugh, no matter how bad the mission,” said Capt. Eric Gagnon, his company commander. “Curtis was the guy that always took the new guy in and made him feel a part of the team.”
Lt. Col. David Hubner, the battalion commander, praised Wooten as a brave soldier who loved his family — and haunted the dance clubs of Schweinfurt when the unit was in Germany.
“He was quite possibly the best dancer in town,” Hubner said. “His friends marveled at his ability to watch a music video, break down the dance steps and learn the newest moves effortlessly.”
Besides his parents, Wooten is survived by one brother, one sister, one half-brother and one half-sister.
