Davenport soldier killed in Iraq

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By Barb Ickes and Ann McGlynn | Thursday, May 3, 2007 11:36 PM CDT | () comments

(Submitted photo)

(Updated 9:48 p.m.) Before Katie Soenksen joined the Army, she told a teacher that she was meant to enlist.

Then she instructed Sue Day:

“Don’t you dare be scared for me. Pray for me. Be happy for me. But don’t be scared for me.”

Day learned during an intercom announcement at Davenport North High School earlier this morning that her former student, the one she nicknamed “Stinky,” died in Iraq, killed by a roadside bomb that destroyed her Humvee in West Baghdad.

“She did exactly what she wanted to do,” said her mother, Mary Ann Soenksen, 24 hours after two Army officials came to her northwest Davenport home to inform her of her daughter’s death. “We raised the kids to be their own people.”

A chaplain and a captain knocked on the Soenksen home door at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. “I knew when it’s two ... . I knew what it meant,” her mom said.

Mary Ann Soenksen opened the last e-mail she received from her daughter this morning. It was about the extension for getting her taxes done. Dad, Ron Soenksen, text-messaged back and forth nearly every day. When he is on his way to work in the afternoon, it is evening in Iraq.

Katie Soenksen, 19, and a 2005 graduate of North, came from a military family. Her grandfather was military police in World War II. Her aunt is set to become a colonel in the Air Force this summer. Two uncles are in the military, as is a niece.

Soenksen was a member of the 410th Military Police Company, based at Fort Hood, Texas. She enlisted in the Army after her graduation from high school in 2005. The Army sent her to Iraq last summer.

She is the 52nd Iowan to die in Iraq, the third woman. She is the second Iowan to die in five days in Baghdad.

She is the first member of North High’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps to die in battle. When she came home on leave, she came to show her new gold Dodge pickup truck to Gunnery Sgt. Greg Livingston, a leader of that group.

“It takes a lot for someone nowadays to don a uniform,” said Livingston, a former Marine. “She was willing to put that uniform on ... and pay the ultimate price. She believed in the cause.”

Soenksen was “always dependable, responsible and showed good leadership,” Livingston said. “She was loved by all.”

Ryan Riewerts, vocal director at North, said word of Soenksen’s death hit the school early today through friends who had kept in touch since the teenager’s deployment.

“I feel so proud that I had a chance to teach her,” he said this afternoon. “Our men’s ensemble is dedicating a song to her tonight."

“It is a definite shock. You know there’s a possibility this can happen, but you hope it doesn’t. I think we’re still numb.”

After announcing Soenksen’s death, the men’s ensemble sang “Grace” during this evening’s spring concert.

Day, who first met Soenksen as a sophomore in a computer class, recalled the smile she always seemed to have on her face.

“Every time I saw her in the hall, she had a sparkle in her eye,” Day said. Soenksen called her “Mrs. Shorty.”

Ann McGlynn can be contacted at (563) 383-2336 or amcglynn@qctimes.com.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.