By Liz Oakes
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Brian Pitman with his son, Noah ,4; wife, Amy; and daughter Brooke, 9 months (Michael Snyder photo)

GREENHILLS - When Staff Sgt. Brian Pitman crossed the border into Iraq last spring and locked and loaded his weapon, he said to himself: "I shouldn't be doing this; I'm a second-grade teacher."

It was - literally and figuratively - more than a thousand miles away from home in Greenhills, and from his class at Hilltop Elementary in Wyoming, where he had been teaching the children how to count by 10s just a few months earlier.

"The entire time I was over there, that was in the back of my mind - I'm just a second-grade teacher," said Pitman, 29, who deployed as a member of the U.S. Army Reserves last Feb. 12.

But Greenhills and Wyoming saw him as more.

More than 500 people turned out to welcome Pitman home at a recent reception at the Wyoming Civic Center after his tour of duty ended this month.

Former students, the entire varsity wrestling team he coached at Wyoming High School, even people he didn't know showed up to shake the hand of the Wyoming native who left for Fort Campbell, Ky., two days after his daughter, Brooke, was born.

And today, Pitman says, he will be more thankful than ever to sit at the Thanksgiving table at his parents' house in Wyoming and celebrate the importance of family, friends and neighbors.

"When my Dad says grace, I think I'm gonna get chills, just from being home, for the holiday season especially," Pitman said.

"It was just so hard, those nine months," holding down the fort at home with a newborn and a toddler and working, too, said Pitman's wife, Amy. But "I'm sure it was a lot harder on him out there than it was on me."

Seeing the poverty in southern Iraq, enduring nights of shelling at "Camp Victory" in Baghdad, and near-misses with explosions that killed troops in his convoys brought home for him the significance of "home."

He says he tried not to think about it, but "you could hear the mortars come in on a nightly basis and the firefights that were still going on, and your heart would stop every so often, thinking, 'How close are they?' "

During a four-month period while he was in Iraq, a student he knew committed suicide, two of his uncles died, two cousins had heart attacks and his mother nearly lost her eyesight.

Pitman said he would lie awake in his bunk, thinking, "Did I tell my wife I loved her as much as I should? Do people know I care about them? Will they miss me as much as I miss them?

"Every night, you would think of something like that."

Pitman, who distributed water to troops on the front lines with the 79th Quartermaster Company, based in Marion, Ohio, had waiting for him at home his wife, son, Noah, 4; and baby Brooke.

He also had the schools.

Two weeks ago, he presented a U.S. flag he flew in Baghdad to Wyoming High School students in memory of the student who died.

"I told the kids, you should feel so lucky you live in the United States of America," he said. "We, without a doubt, live in the best country in the world."

Pitman had hoped to be home in time to begin teaching school this fall, but his orders kept getting pushed back.

He wasn't able to return mid-year to his old job at Hilltop Elementary, but fate intervened, and on Jan. 5 he'll step in for a teacher on maternity leave in first grade at Elm Avenue School in Wyoming.

Pitman ponders what to tell the first-graders when - or if - they ask about Iraq.

"It's going to be difficult in some ways, but I am so thankful that I get to go back into the classroom."

Missy Horn of Wyoming and her family were among the crowd at the civic center. Her daughter, Katie, 9, had Pitman as a second-grade teacher two years ago and still keeps a picture of him on her nightstand.

"The kids are so fond of him, and the parents, as well. He's just an all-around great guy," she said.

Mostly, Pitman says, "I'm just thankful I'm back."

And his two hometowns are thankful, too.

E-mail loakes@enquirer.com