Soldier shot, lives. (Haskell kids are tough) :

[mrhaskellok]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080429_1_A1_spanc48341
Sapulpan earns a Purple Heart
RECIPIENT

Ryan Bair: "You always think it's going to be them, not you. Well, that day it was me."




By MANNY GAMALLO World Staff Writer
4/29/2008

Sometimes, a split second is all the difference between life and death.

And there's no better judge of that than Spc. Ryan Bair of the Oklahoma Army National Guard.

Just last month, Bair was manning the gun turret of his Humvee during an escort mission in Iraq when a bomb went off nearby.

As he turned his head in the direction of the blast -- at that very precise second -- a sniper's bullet glanced off the left side of his helmet, just above the ear.

Had he not turned his head in that flash of time, he would have been killed.

Even then, the impact of the bullet knocked him down with a concussion-type injury. Many of his fellow troops in the Humvee thought he was dead.

But as soon as he regained his senses, Bair jumped back into his turret and began blasting away at the enemy.

That commitment to service alone won him high praise from his commanders.

But Monday, during a special ceremony in Baghdad, Bair, of Sapulpa, received another distinction.

He was honored with a Purple Heart -- the first member of the Oklahoma Army National Guard to receive the medal for an injury suffered
in Iraq.

About 2,800 members of the Oklahoma Guard arrived in Iraq in late January for combat duty and will return home by early October.

The 26-year-old Bair, attached to Company C, 1st Battalion, 279th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Brigade, reflected on that pivotal day in March.

"It bothered me at first," Bair said Monday. "You always think it's going to be them, not you. Well, that day it was me."

Afterward, Bair said it "felt eerie" for a few days while he recovered from the concussion.

Still, he said he wasn't going to let his close brush with death intimidate him, so he climbed back into his turret and resumed his missions.

"I feel very fortunate, and I believe someone was watching over me," he said.

That's the way his family feels, too.

His wife, Penny, whom he married four months ago, said she experienced premonition-like feelings the day he was injured. She believes it was March 26.

"It was a weird day. Something was wrong. I just felt sick that day," she said.

She said after Bair phoned and told her what happened, she knew why she had felt that way.

Bair recently came home on leave for two weeks and re turned to Iraq on April 21.

His wife said he was eager to get back to his "brothers" in Iraq.

They were married on Dec. 28 when Bair, along with the other 2,800 troops, returned to Oklahoma for the holidays.

The troops had been at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, where they were training for the Iraq mission.

His wife said they had planned to marry when he returned from Iraq in October, "but he called me one day from Fort Bliss and said he wanted to get married in December," she said.

"So I put together a wedding in five weeks."

The couple lives in Sapulpa, along with her children, Gage, 7; Taylor, 8; and Addison, 3.

Bair was born in Tulsa, but grew up in Haskell, where he was the starting quarterback for the high school football team. He was also a baseball pitcher.

He graduated from high school in 2000 and has been with the Oklahoma National Guard for four years.

His near-death experience in Iraq wasn't the first time he was injured serving with the Guard.

According to his mother, Diana Bair of Keys, her son was more seriously injured in New Orleans when the Oklahoma Guard was called there in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.

One night, while he was chasing "druggie types" across some rooftops, one of them fired a gun at him, his mother said.

When he ducked for cover, he crashed down through three floors of a gutted building, she said.

Bair spent several days in a hospital recovering from a host of internal injuries, his mother said.

Despite that brush with death, she said her son stays mentally tough.

Like everyone else in the family, Diana and Jamie Bair, along with their other son, 18-year-old Cody, are proud of the Purple Heart honor.

Still, Diana Bair has mixed emotions because "it could have gone the other way" -- had her son not turned his head at that exact second.

"He's in God's hands," she said. "I pray for him every day and night; I pray for him and for all the troops."



Manny Gamallo 581-8386
manny.gamallo@tulsaworld.com