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Wife, Father, Hold on to Memories of
Slain Soldier
Maryland Newsline Tuesday, May 3, 2005
Amelia Fortune says she will always remember what her husband told her last August. It was 3 a.m., she recalls, and his unit was being deployed from Camp Hovey, in the Republic of Korea, to Iraq. “ ‘Whatever happens, Amy, I’ll always love you, and please take care of Moesha,’ ” she recalled him saying. Two months later, Army Sgt. Maurice Fortune was killed instantly when a car bomb exploded next to the vehicle he was riding in, in Ar Ramadi, a city in central Iraq, military officials said. He was 25. Amelia Fortune, who is 30, says she still doesn’t believe her husband of two years is gone. She has no job and uses her widow benefits to support her three children. Her youngest, Moesha Beverly, Fortune’s only biological child, is 19 months old. Her two others, a boy and a girl, are 9 and 5. Amelia Fortune is waiting for citizenship approval from the U.S. Embassy in Korea, and for orders to move with her late husband’s unit at Camp Hovey to Fort Carson, Colo., later this year. Her first stop in the United States, she says, will be Maryland, where her husband enlisted in 2001, and planned to retire from the Army. Fortune has an aunt living in Salisbury, and four stepsisters and a stepbrother in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. At Camp Hovey
At Camp Hovey, Fortune was assigned to the Army’s 2nd Battallion, 17th Field Artillery, 2nd Brigade Combat Team. He worked as a fire control system specialist for the Fire Direction Center, where he coordinated events and was a driver. In 2003, Fortune was promoted to sergeant. Amelia Fortune says her husband loved his work, but became depressed last May when he found out his unit was going to be deployed. He fell into pensive moods, she says. She would ask him what was wrong, and he wouldn’t answer. Last August, his unit was deployed to Iraq to assist in street and highway patrol. He was killed by a car bomb two months later, on Oct. 29, 2004, an Army spokesman said. A Family Tradition
Littleton Fortune, a retired airman who raised his son in the Philippines, says Maurice was always reserved—even as a child. He rarely cried, and his dad says he doesn’t remember ever hitting or scolding him. As an adolescent, his son always had a lot of friends and played a lot of basketball, his dad said. At 5 feet 5 inches tall, he could leap as high as any six foot tall player, Littleton Fortune said. After high school, Fortune enrolled in a computer engineering program in the Philippines. After a year, Littleton Fortune says, his son got disenchanted with his studies. Fortune helped his father around the house until an aunt and uncle from Maryland invited him to stay with them in 2000. Littleton Fortune says he wasn’t surprised when his son enlisted in the Army in January 2001. The Fortunes have a military tradition that dates back to the Spanish-American War, he says. Littleton Fortune joined the Air Force at 17. He has nine other family members in the military. His son’s death, he says, has permanently scarred the family. But, he says, he is proud of Fortune’s military accomplishments.
Fortune was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his meritorious service in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Amelia Fortune says she remembers her husband as the kind of soldier who would volunteer for a mission that could cost him his life. His last words of love and concern, she says, continue to comfort her every day. “I always talk to God about him,” she says. “He had lots of plan for us, especially for Moesha.”
Copyright ©
2005 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of
Journalism
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