This Story was originally published March 19, 2005

On April 15, 2005, Rick Ulbright’s high school in Boise, Idaho, dedicated an 8-foot-tall, metal and granite memorial to alumni who died in service to their country.

Fourteen hundred students filed to the middle of the school quad for a 15-minute ceremony that began with the national anthem and ended with the playing of taps. The school arranged for the state National Guard to roar by in a four-plane salute.

Ulbright wasn’t there for the ceremony, but his family was.

 

A graduate of the class of 1973, Ulbright was killed by rocket fire in August 2004 at Kirkuk Air Force Base in northern Iraq. He was 49.

He is the oldest alumnus of the six whose names are on the war memorial.

Ulbright left behind a wife in Southern Maryland, two grown daughters, three sisters, a grandchild he’d yet to meet – and his parents, who live in Boise.

Rocket Attack

The unexpectedness of his death left family and colleagues stunned. They remember an upbeat, strong-minded man who cherished his family, planned to visit his new granddaughter in Australia after returning from Iraq, and who drove himself to be a role model to people around him.

His death was particularly shocking because he wasn’t involved in combat. A civilian agent who conducted lie detection tests for the military, Ulbright had put off a new teaching job in South Carolina to volunteer for a six-month tour abroad helping counterintelligence efforts.

Nearly four months into his Iraq tour, Ulbright finished conducting a polygraph test at Kirkuk Air Force Base and walked outside toward an office in a separate building to retrieve some paperwork, military sources said.

He had reached the building door when a rocket soared over the base’s walls, wounding him. He died on a military operating table on Aug. 8, 2004, three days before his 20th wedding anniversary.

Ulbright’s wife, Karen, continues to live at the Waldorf, house they bought together two-and-a-half years ago. She has declined interviews since her husband’s death, directing reporters to talk to his colleagues at Andrews Air Force Base.

The two met and married in the early 1980s in North Dakota, where Ulbright worked in helicopter maintenance at Grand Forks Air Force Base and took evening classes for a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice administration.

More than seven months after Ulbright’s death, his wife’s answering machine continues to play an outgoing message in his deep voice. “You’ve reached Rick and Karen,” Ulbright says matter-of-factly.

His mother, Wanda Ulbright, has also saved recordings of her son’s voice on her answering machine, she said. Listening to them comforts her, she said.

Ulbright paid his own way through Boise State University for three years before enlisting in the Air Force partly because he needed the help with tuition, his mother said.

He moved every few years, shuttling between Air Force bases in the United States and abroad, first as an active duty employee and then as a civilian polygraph examiner. He continued work