
When Frank T. Carvill told his sister he had been called up to go to Iraq, she was stunned.
“Gee, Frank, are you going to be part of the AARP battalion?” she teased, referring to the retirees lobbying group.
At 51, Carvill, an Army sergeant with the New Jersey National Guard, was among the oldest soldiers to die in Iraq. He was killed last June in an ambush outside Baghdad that also claimed the lives of four other Guard members from New Jersey and Oregon.
Carvill had escaped both terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, where he worked as a paralegal. In 1993, he helped a co-worker down 54 floors to safety. On Sept. 11, 2001, he left the north tower moments before one of the hijacked planes plowed into the...