Lori Ann Piestewa
Profile
Age: 23
From: Tuba City, Ariz.
Assigned to 507th Maintenance Company, Fort Bliss, Texas
Incident: Army Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa was killed in an ambush near Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Died: March 23, 2003
Pfc. Lori Piestewa was the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and the granddaughter of a World War I veteran. She was a source of pride for Tuba City, Ariz., a town of 8,200 people on the Navajo Reservation but close to Hopi land.
Piestewa, a single mother raising a 4-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl, enlisted in the Army two years ago and had served as a commanding officer of Junior ROTC in high school.
“She will be remembered as a daughter, as a proud mother of two, as a good friend able to comfort others in distress,” said Hopi Tribal Chairman Wayne Taylor.
— Associated Press
Mom, Hopi, hero: Piestewa an icon
By Billy House and Mark Shaffer
Arizona Republic/Associated Press
Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa has become the nation’s most recognizable Native American military icon since Ira Hayes helped raise the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima.
Just ask retired Army Col. Tom Spencer of Hampstead, N.C.%2