Army Special Forces soldier Scott William Dyer died smiling this week in a helicopter high above the mountains of southern Afghanistan, his mother said Friday.
Dyer had been struck by heavy fire Wednesday. His men tried to save him by pulling his wounded body onto the aircraft.
But it was too late. As Dyer’s captain took his hand, the soldier looked up, smiled and slipped away. He was 38.
“He lived life, every second, up until his death,” his mother, Sandy Miller, said Friday.
“We were so proud of him,” she said.
Dyer is the 26th Floridian to die in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.
Raised in Brevard County, Dyer was a chief warrant officer assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group out of Fort Bragg, N.C. He received numerous awards before his death and was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for valor. His funeral will be at Arlington National Cemetery.
In addition to Miller, Dyer is survived by wife Jodi, 37, and their children, Casey, 10, and Sidney, 6, of Sanford, N.C.; and sisters Tawnie Peterson of Chuluota and Dawn Hill of Rockledge.
Dyer grew up in Port St. John, where Miller and her children moved after she divorced.
There, they were close to Dyer’s grandfather, a World War II Navy veteran who worked in the space industry. He told the boy about his wartime adventures.
When Dyer was 5, he told his mother his future was set.
“There were two things he was going to do: He was going to be a soldier and ride a motorcycle,” Miller said.
“He later added, ‘Jump out of airplanes,’ ” she said.
Life was pleasant on the Brevard coast, Miller said, and Dyer threw himself into it. As a student at Titusville High School, he was on the football, wrestling and track teams. He could have attended college on a wrestling scholarship but decided against it, his mother said.
One week after Dyer’s 1987 graduation, he signed up for the Army as a cavalry scout.
Dyer was an athletic man, and the military suited him well. He graduated at the top of his Army Ranger class, Miller said, and volunteered for Special Forces in 1993.
“He was proud of what he did,” Miller said.
Even as opinion soured on American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he told Miller the conflict was the only way to stop terrorists from attacking the U.S., she said.
He also believed in family. He met Jodi while he was assigned to Fort Smith, Ark., and knew immediately they would fall in love, Miller said. They married in 1989 at Cherry Down Park in Cape Canaveral.
It took hard work for Dyer to balance his love of family and the Army, Miller said, but he did it. When he was at his Sanford, N.C., home, he coached his children’s sports teams and took them and their friends wakeboarding often. They took family trips to Hawaii and Alaska.
When he was in Iraq or Afghanistan, he talked to his children every day using the Internet and a Web camera — even on the day he died, Miller said.
It happened after nightfall, Jodi and others told Miller. His team was hovering in a helicopter above a mountaintop.
Dyer was the first to jump out. Ground fire hit him. His men pulled him back inside for safety, but he was already too badly injured.
Hours later, Miller got a call at her home in Jupiter.
“Mom, Scott has passed,” Jodi told Miller. Within minutes, Miller was driving to North Carolina to prepare to bury her son.
