'A piece is always going to be missing’

Hardly a day goes by that Marcia Herrgott, 50, doesn't stop to visit her son, Pfc. Edward James Herrgott. The 20-year-old from Shakopee became the first Minnesotan killed in the Iraq war when he was shot and killed by a sniper in July 2003 while guarding a national museum in Baghdad. Herrgott is buried in a cemetery about a mile from where he grew up.

It doesn't matter now what the reasons were for going in. It's done. We're in there, and we have to make it right before we pull out. Did I want us to go to war? Heck no, because my kid would go. ... And I wish we would have had more support from other countries going in, but it didn't happen that way. But that's neither here nor there ...

You always think time heals, but it really doesn't in a case of a young person dying. Your kid is not supposed to die before you do. You know, me and my husband go out to his gravesite almost every day. Sometimes life gets in the way, and we don't get out there. But we spend his birthday and his anniversaries out there. Memorial Day, and things like that. ... He's right here in Shakopee. He's right here, so at 1 o'clock in the morning we can be out there visiting his grave and a cop will pull up and say, "What are you doing here?" And we just explain, "We're visiting him." And they say, "It's OK. ..."

It gets hard some days, and other days it's just fine. It just depends on the time of the year, I guess.

One time me and my husband were out walking and this kid was playing basketball down in the basketball courts, and it just kind of threw us both because he looked so much like Jim from the back. It was like "Whoa!" You know? ...

You know, there's a piece of you, like some guy said, he ripped up a piece of paper and he says, "OK that's your heart." You know, he threw it down and he took a piece out and he just threw it away and says, "OK, now try and put that heart back together." It's like, "You know, you're right." That's the way it is. A piece is always going to be missing. It might regrow to be whole again, but a piece will always be missing. ...

I wear my pendant [with Jim's photo] every day. People see it and ask me, "Is your son in the Army? Is he in the military?" And I say "Yes, he was." And they ask "Is he in Iraq?" And I say "No, he passed away in Iraq." And it's like "Oh my God."

Before this, I would have never thought to send anybody a card because they lost a loved one in the war. I would have never gone to funerals if I hadn't lost a loved one. So it's changed my life completely, because I'm more sentimental, more emotional. I know what these people who have lost loved ones in Iraq have gone through. And I want to be there for them if they need me.

Coming Wednesday: Ron-Michael Pellant, a returning National Guard chief warrant officer from St. Paul.

Herrgott's comments were edited from a longer interview with reporter Richard Meryhew.