My heart goes out in deepest sympathy to the family and friends and to the Westmoreland community upon hearing of the untimely death of Coley Newton. From the perspective of his 9th grade English teacher, Coley was an often obstinate student--one to be reckoned with in the classroom. On the gridiron, he was tenacious. A head-hunter. He loved the big hit and be the last man standing. He wanted to run the ball. I put him in the back-field for one play. He mowed down everybody on defense and offensive. I told him to stick to blocking and tackling, and there he made his presence known, giving his runners room to run and their runners remorse for carrying the ball. First thing, Coley was a country boy and so hunting came before homework. Coley preferred guns to grammar; preferred love of living over literature; preferred being in nature over just reading about it. Yes, Coley was a reluctant and un-repentant 9th grade student. An over-grown Huckleberry Finn. Other than asking about him whenever I saw his Dad, Colston, at the Calleo supermarket, I lost track of Coley for a good while. I knew that he had joined the service and had been deployed numerous times to Iraq and to Afghanistan. I suppose Coley was disposed to battle as a warrior, as he was in school as a student. Independent minded. Defiant. Ambivalent, yet respectful of authority. I often saw Coley at "Jack's" between his many deployments. All decked out in camo, coming in for lunch from duck hunting. The last time I saw him was last month in the same condition. Happy that he was back home and confident that he knew something I didn't know and would never find out. I saw him another time at "Jack's"once sizing up the chicken livers. After not seeing him for so many years, I immediatly got a flashback of when I was admonishing him for not putting forth a greater effort in the classroom and on the gridiron. As usual, he put on that fox-guilty grin, that rye smile that conveyed, "Coach, we BOTH know I can do it all; why do I have to prove it?" Coley saw it as his duty to serve his country unconditionally and without reservation. It is our duty now and forever to remember him always for what he was: Not only a native and citizen of Westmoreland, but an American who loved it all: his country, his life and his native home. Coley sacrificed it all so that others around the world might have a brief glimmer of what we have and and take for granted here in America: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, relatively free of war, disease, and famine. As a student, a warrior, a husband and a dad, Coley accomplished so much--all within the short time allotted to him. Coley could do it all. And he proved it. Would that we would do half of what he did in the short time he was with us. He beckons us now, with that rye smile, to do so.