
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Robert Allen Wise, the young infantryman killed in Iraq, had to get his mother’s signature to join the Florida National Guard when he was 17 — a decision his mom said Monday she almost denied.
“I drove over to the school with the full intention of telling him I could not do this,” Tammy Wise said.
But when she picked up her son that fateful day from a high school class, he said, “Mom, we’ve got to talk.”
And she told him to go first.
Robert Wise told his mother that while many of his buddies had no idea what they were going to do after finishing school, he knew where he was headed — to boot camp and a military...