Killed in Iraq -- He Isn’t Just a Statistic, He’s a Mother’s Son

Yes, there were lots of other things the San Fernando Valley woman could have talked about regarding the war in Iraq. But this wasn’t the time for politics.

On this day, Jane Bright was a mother, just a mother who wanted to talk about her son.

Evan Ashcraft was killed last week. He was 24 and an Army sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division. When his mother invited me to visit with her, she had only one purpose. She wanted to honor her boy, and to put a human face to the daily tally of casualties.

“I don’t want them to be just numbers,” said Bright, human resources director for a North Hollywood aerospace company. “This anguish is unspeakable, and another family goes through it every day. We’re not speaking enough about the losses.”

Evan Ashcraft’s 23-year-old wife, Ashley, was staying with her dad in Castaic when word came Thursday at dawn. The Army messenger was in tears before even delivering the news.

Upstairs, Ashley knew it without hearing a word.

“I was on the floor, screaming,” she said. “I didn’t want to let them tell me.” Ashcraft was one of three American soldiers killed in an ambush near Mosul in northern Iraq. He might have been part of the mission that claimed the lives of Saddam Hussein’s sons, but the family just doesn’t know the details yet. They believe Evan was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Every day, Jane Bright would read news accounts from Iraq and breathe a sigh of relief if her son’s division was somewhere other than in the middle of firefights that continue with no end in sight, despite early claims of victory.

She had reservations about the war from the start, and she had closely followed the debate about whether the world had been misled regarding the justification for combat. But she loved and supported her son without qualification, and losing him makes the politics entirely irrelevant.

Nothing matters except that he’s gone.

Nothing matters except that his wife, Ashley, had just finished school and was going to be a teacher.

Nothing matters except that Evan, who played classical piano, was going to go to college before becoming a cop like his father-in-law, LAPD Sgt. Loren Farell, and then have children with Ashley.

“There’s still so much of his energy. It’s important not to just let him die,” says Bright, and so she tells the story of the life he planned.

Bright got the phone call from her ex-husband.

“He said, ‘I hate to be the one to tell you this,’ ” the mother says. “I couldn’t even fathom Evan being killed.” Now the entire family, including Evan’s little brother Drew, 17, is gathered in Castaic. The Army rep who delivered the grim news has returned to discuss arrangements for the shipping of Evan’s body back home, and Bright excuses herself to listen in. When she leaves the kitchen, her husband, Jim Bright, speaks up.

“I think it’s normal to say, ‘OK, I lost a son. Was this for a good cause?’ But what Jane is saying is that she lost a son, and people need to know he was not a number,” Jim Bright says. “He was someone to be honored and remembered. She and I both believe it transcends political consideration. Kids are dying, and that is what it is. Kids are dying.”

He was top-notch, Bright says of her son when she returns. “Absolutely top-notch, like so many of these kids who are fighting over there. It’s important that we tell their story, because they need our support.”

Evan had been cited last April for rescuing two wounded soldiers. The El Camino Real High School grad had told his family that, if anything happened to him, he wanted them to throw a party, not a wake.

“We’re going to do it,” Bright said. “We’re going to celebrate his life.”

Before going to Iraq, Evan told his mother he was aware of her reservations about the war. She told him it didn’t matter; she’d do what a mother does.

She’d love him. She’d believe in him. And she’d support him and his fellow soldiers 100%.

“He believed in what he was doing, and I told him, ‘Go do your job. Do what you were trained to do,” Bright says. “And come home safe.’ ”

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.