Friday, June 17, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

21-year-old Henderson guardsman dies in Iraq

Joe Cometa sits by a picture of his son, Nevada Army National Guard Spc. Anthony Cometa, on Thursday at his Henderson home. Anthony Cometa was killed in Iraq when his Humvee flipped. Family friend Joe Ventino is in the background. Photo by John Locher. Anthony Cometa Guardsman celebrated his 21st birthday on Wednesday

Sitting on a sofa in his Henderson condominium Thursday, Joe Cometa wondered: "When is it going to end?"

"It's got to stop," he said. "I sound bitter because I lost my kid, but bring these kids home. ... I don't want other families going through this."

On the coffee table was a framed photograph of Joe Cometa's 21-year-old son, Spc. Anthony Cometa of the 1864th Transportation Company. The younger Cometa was a 2002 Silverado High School graduate, wrestler, music lover and soldier.

He was a "kid" who joined the Nevada Army National Guard so he could earn money to go to college and buy a house, his dad said.

On Thursday, on a dangerous bend in a road in southern Iraq, Anthony Cometa was thrown from his perch in the machine-gun turret when his Humvee flipped. He was pronounced dead after the rescue helicopter got him to a field hospital, Joe Cometa said.

One day after his 21st birthday, Anthony Cometa became the first Nevada Army National Guard soldier to die in U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The war in Iraq recently has been particularly tragic for the state, with three Nevada deaths in the past week. In all, there have been 21 U.S. military personnel with ties to Nevada who have died since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Army Cpl. Stanley Lapinski, 35, a 3rd Infantry Division soldier from Las Vegas was killed Saturday in Baghdad when an explosive device detonated near his Humvee. He will be buried later this month in Arlington National Cemetery.

Marine Cpl. Jesse Jaime, 22, of Henderson was among five Marines killed Wednesday when their vehicle ran over an explosive device near Ramadi.

Jaime, a Chaparral High School graduate, was a member of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1 Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Jaime's twin brother, Joel, is a Marine who also is stationed in Iraq and part of the same battalion but a different platoon, according to 1st Sgt. Joe Kapala, a Marine Corps spokesman in Las Vegas.

"He's escorting the body back," Kapala said of Joel Jaime on Thursday.

Jaime's family has declined to be interviewed, but Cometa and his ex-wife, Nancy Fontana, of Rochester, N.Y., spoke openly Thursday about their son's death.

Fontana said her son "was very proud to be serving his country. He loved music, he loved his family and he never worried about anything," she said.

"Everybody he met was impacted by him. He just touched everybody," Fontana said by telephone. "This is my worst fear."

She said she last talked to her son Friday night and his morale was high but the weather was hot, much hotter than he was used to in Las Vegas.

"He was anxious to come home in October," she said. "He goes, `Mom, I never appreciated air conditioning until now.' He just loved life. He's going to be missed by a lot of friends."

Joe Cometa said his son taught himself how to play the bass guitar. And the sergeants let him and his buddies have a band at their camp in Kuwait.

"When he came home he was going to do the music thing," said Cometa, 47, who resigned from his job Thursday as a dealer at Excalibur.

Anthony Steven Cometa was born June 15, 1984, in Rochester, N.Y. He moved to the Las Vegas Valley in 1999, two years after his father relocated to the valley.

Tony or Zaza as his dad called him attended Green Valley High School as a freshman but finished his final three years at Silverado High, where he was on the wrestling team. He worked at some "burger joints," his dad said, and later decided to sign up for the Nevada Army National Guard with friend Pat Brunson.

"He said, `Wow, Dad, they'll pay for my college,' " Cometa recalled. "I even told him, `Please don't join right now.' "

The 1864th Transportation Company left from the Henderson armory on Aug. 19 for training at Fort Lewis, Wash. The 175 soldiers tasked with maintaining and driving trucks around Iraq loaded with food, water and ammunition arrived in Kuwait in November.

"When he first went in he was really gung-ho about the whole situation," he said.

"His heart was huge. ... He never bailed on anybody. If you needed help from Tony, Tony was there for you," Cometa said.

As time went on and he took on a new assignment as a gunner on a Humvee for convoy security, Cometa said his son's attitude changed.

"He wasn't happy. He just said we need to come back home," Cometa said. "He was a little disappointed with President Bush not getting those guys out of there."

Cometa said he tried all day Wednesday to call his son on his birthday but was unable to reach him.

He said his son will be buried in Rochester, N.Y.

Anthony's brother, 23-year-old Joe, said the news was only beginning to sink in.

"To put it in a nutshell, it sucks," he said.

Review-Journal staff writer Frank Curreri contributed to this report.