By Ellen Miller
Rocky Mountain News (Colorado)
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
MONTROSE, Colo. — In a subdivision near the isolated foothills east of Montrose, Judy and Steve Sitton tried Tuesday to absorb the news that their son, Army Spc. Chris Sitton, had died in a roadside bombing in eastern Afghanistan.
Friends and neighbors decorated their lawn and porch with American flags and yellow ribbons, and placed the sign “Lest He Be Forgotten” on the front porch.
“Chris has been gone, and now to think he’s not coming back . . . ,” said Judy Sitton. “He was awesome, one of those kids everybody wanted to know. Even as a little kid, he was helping people and always thought of others first.”
The 21-year-old Eagle Scout, lifeguard and track star was a medic with the 10th Mountain Division deployed to Afghanistan in March. He died Saturday when an improvised explosive device detonated as his supply convoy traveled along a road.
Sitton was in the Boy Scouts from second grade on and qualified for Eagle while the family lived in Quinlan, Texas, before they moved to Montrose in 2001. The Colorado outdoors proved a powerful lure for Sitton.
“He camped, hiked, skied, waterskied, you name it,” his father said. “Chris was a high-speed, low-drag guy. Life was about fun.”
“And friends,” Judy Sitton added.
Sitton’s older sister, Laura, talked of her brother’s passion for music and how he played in a jazz band in Texas. Sitton began running track as a junior in Montrose.
By his senior year, he won the 400-meter run and placed second at 200 meters at the Western Slope regional track meet and also qualified for the state meet as part of two relay teams.
Sarah Ackerman, a senior at Regis University, talked of her friend’s love of the outdoors and how “he’s gotta be the greatest guy ever, with the biggest heart.”
Ackerman said she met Sitton shortly after his family moved to Montrose and they both worked as lifeguards at the same pool. They were among other teenagers on the Venture Crew, a co-ed branch of the Boy Scouts.
“I remember when he just got here from Texas and he just had to go backpacking,” Ackerman said. “We were above timberline and the altitude is a whole lot different than Texas. He was so energetic he was bounding off rocks. We told him to slow down but he wouldn’t, but it caught up with him later.”
He entered the Army in January 2004 and was to have been discharged in January 2008, after which he wanted to go to college and then medical school.
Services are pending. The Sittons don’t know when the Army will return his body to Montrose or where he will be buried. They have decided they want full military honors.
“We just found out today,” Judy Sitton said. “He’d qualified for corporal and it was approved, and now it will be awarded posthumously.”
“He’s really going to be missed,” she said.