By Reid Forgrave
Enquirer staff writer

In his five months in Iraq before a rocket-propelled grenade peppered his body with shrapnel last week, Staff Sgt. Paul Brondhaver drove nearly 10,000 miles around the war zone.

He delivered mail to fellow soldiers, transported supplies, and learned the ways of the desert. On combat patrol once near Baghdad, he hugged Iraqi kids storming his vehicle and passed out candy, and their parents said, "America very good."

Torrell Williams, 18, Brittney Chaney, 17, and Fred Beatty, 19, at the English Woods Community Center. (Enquirer photo/GLENN HARTONG)

What most struck the director of the Mount Washington Community Center as the saddest part of Iraq were the lives of the kids.

So, in typical fashion, he decided to do something.

At first, he tried to get playground equipment for Iraqi kids.

Reality check, Paul, said his recreation colleagues from Cincinnati. You can't afford shipping playground equipment to Iraq.

The 35-year-old settled on a more modest but just as important project: collecting shoes and socks for Iraqi children who walk around barefoot.

And it's just as typical that, from his hospital bed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany last week before being transported to a military hospital in Washington, D.C., then on to Fort Knox, Ky., Brondhaver worked the phone to ensure the sock drive continued.

"Someone described him as the type of guy you want to be," said Mark Celsor, Brondhaver's current boss with the Cincinnati Recreation Commission. "If anybody is a hometown hero, he is. He's done so much for his community, for the kids of the community, and for his country. Putting your life on the line - you can't do more than that."

Throughout Greater Cincinnati, people whose lives have been touched by Brondhaver are hoping he makes a speedy recovery and comes home soon.

"He was an uncle to these kids," said Wallace Evans, 30, who worked with Brondhaver at the English Woods Community Center. "These kids are so concerned about him. Now he means even more to these kids - he's in this war, and he's one of us, man."

SOCKS AND SHOES

Injured Staff Sgt. Paul Brondhaver is back in the United States, transferred this week to Fort Knox, Ky. But the drive he started to bring socks to Iraqi children continues. To donate unopened packages of unisex socks or kids' shoes, call the Mount Washington Community Center at (513) 232-4762 or visit the community center, 1715 Beacon St.

When Brondhaver started at the community center, said Fred Beatty, now 19, the kids were skeptical.

"It seemed too good to be true," he said. "Nobody ever really helped us. Nobody ever fixed the rec up. Nobody got us money before. He came in promising everything, and he followed through."

Brondhaver persuaded housing authorities to convert two apartments into a teen center.

English Woods is an unusual place to work for a New Richmond native who grew up in a trailer park. Neighbors tell of kids growing up in crack dens and feeling little hope for their future. Brondhaver always has encouraged them to excel.

"If he feels you don't have the confidence to do something, he'd pull you aside and talk with you," said Tiffani Jones, a Northern Kentucky University student who attended Brondhaver's former community center in Clifton. "He'd tell you that you can accomplish anything. As a kid, you need to hear that. And then he'd get on your nerves until you do it."

He'd help kids with homework and give them pointers in basketball and football. He would take them on trips to Paramount's Kings Island and professional sporting events. He'd organize teen socials four times a year - sometimes picnics, sometimes trips to the ski slopes in Indiana. He would take the kids to buy school supplies, often paying out of pocket. During one fall festival, Brondhaver took kids on Humvee Hayrides.

On nice days at the community center, Brondhaver would lead the kids on marches down Ludlow Avenue in Clifton's Gaslight District. Brondhaver taught them Army songs.

"They say that in the Army, the coffee's mighty fine," Brondhaver led his chorus. "It looks like muddy water, and tastes like turpentine."

For teenage kids who needed money, Brondhaver culled from his connections at Coney Island to get them jobs picking up trash and helping with parking.

Man of faith first

Brondhaver was heading toward another promotion with the recreation commission when his unit, the 216th Combat Engineer Battalion out of Hamilton, was activated in December, his boss said. They're hoping to have him back at the Mount Washington Community Center after he spends a few weeks recovering at Fort Knox. Brondhaver said he hopes to return to his platoon in Iraq as soon as possible.

But above all, Brondhaver considers himself a man of faith.

Two days before the attack severely injured Brondhaver and killed his buddy, Pfc. Samuel L. Bowen, Brondhaver e-mailed friends and colleagues about how he felt touched by God while in Iraq - and how his war experience made him feel more mortal than ever.

"There has been many unexplainable incidents the 3rd platoon of the 216th has gone through and lived," Brondhaver wrote of his platoon. "The only answer I can come up with is God. Recently God placed me at a wreckage site near the Tigris River where two of my soldiers needed help. I was there to pull them out and render first aid. ... God was the one that placed us there at the right place at the right time. God was the hero, that day and every day."

And, as he thanked American military support groups for sending gifts to troops, Brondhaver wrote what sounds like a harrowing premonition of the attack that would nearly kill him two days later on July 7.

"See, God has a plan for all of us, and His plan is a perfect one," he wrote. "I get through everyday only because it is His will. When it is my time, I can't hide behind an automatic weapon, I can't hide in an armored Humvee, I can't even duck to avoid the incoming grenade, bullet, or mortar. When God says my time is up, then it is my time."

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E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com