Slain Guardsman remembered by friends
4:52 p.m. Tuesday, August 5, 2008
"Ronnie was not afraid of anything or anybody."
Fearlessness drove Specialist Ronald Schmidt, or Ronnie as his friends called him, to enlist in the National Guard.
He didn't go alone.
"I think they had just gotten done training here, passing a PT test. And they were quite full of themselves for motivating him to get it done."
Daniel Dennett trained and bunked with Ronnie and the two got into plenty of trouble together.
They were practically family.
"We thought of him as a grandson, as another one of our grandsons," said family friend Sherry Neuhring.
Spc. Ronald Andrew Schmidt
Ronnie had lived with Dennett's grandparents the past two and a half years.
Sherry Neuhring says she had just spoken with Ronnie Wednesday.
"He was already telling me about the food he wanted me to fix him when he got here," she said. "That's why it was such a shock to see the lieutenant captain and chaplain at the door."
Saturday, Ronnie died in Iraq when his humvee overturned.
Daniel's mom, Stacey, says her son was with him.
"They loved each other like brothers. They got to say goodbye to each other," Stacey Dennett said. "He came off with this real tough persona. Underneath, he would have given you the shirt off your back."
They're traits he carried through the halls of Newton High and onto the wrestling mat.
"He was not a person you could easily ignore. He had a number of friends, busy social life. I don't know when he had time to sleep," said Roger Erickson, ronnie's assistant principal.
Erickson says Ronnie had a good, strong work ethic. He put in 40 hours a week here at the McDonald's his junior and senior years.
"He would be proud of that picture. He would love that."
Ronnie enlisted in the National Guard shortly after he graduated last May.
"They were all supposed to come back. We were having a coming home party. Not like this," Stacey Dennett said.
His extended family now waits to hear the plans to say goodbye.
Specialist Schmidt would have turned 19 this week.
He was due back from Iraq in October.
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