Answering the call

Image courtesy: Wittman family/WSPA-TV

For three consecutive days before Sgt. Jeremiah Wittman was killed in Afghanistan, he text messaged his wife, Karyn, and said he would try to call whenever he could. The last words he typed to his wife mentioned how much he wanted to speak to their three-year-old child, Miah. While daddy and daughter never got to have that final conversation, the little girl knows who her father was, and where he is now.

"At Heaven," said Miah.

Miah grabbed her photo album and showed [WYFF-TV] News4's Mike McCormick pictures of her father.

"My daddy's a soldier," she said.

Sgt. Wittman was killed on February 13 in Zhari province, alongside Staff Sgt. John Reiners and Spc. Bobby Pagan. Wittman's wife preferred not to discuss the circumstances of his death in an interview with Greenville, South Carolina, affiliate WYFF-TV. She wanted to focus on his life.

"He was a family man," Karyn said.

Wittman was expected to end his deployment in the next few months. He planned to leave the Army for good in November.

"He wanted to be with his family," Karyn said.

He'd already been on one deployment to Iraq.

"He wanted to do what he did so his family wouldn't have to or no one else would have to," Karyn said.

The grieving widow told WSPA-TV, where I worked for two years, that Miah is named after her dad. While Jeremiah was not able to speak with his little girl one last time, it is clear that the call he answered to serve his country will live on through young Miah and a second daughter in Wyoming. Whenever they need advice during childhood and beyond, the phone lines to heaven will always be open.