In Bailey, a precious link

The toddler at the center of this story sprints through his grandparents' south Omaha living room. He pounces on his older brother, demands a horsey ride, and squeals with delight.

He appears in front of the Christmas tree and stares wide-eyed at the twinkling lights. You can see his brain working, turning, wondering. What will happen if I stick this silver tinsel in my mouth?

“Bailey!” his mother yells, and he scampers away, a naughty grin plastered across his face.

This toddler doesn't yet know he's tethered to a man he never met, a Bellevue firefighter and Nebraska National Guardsman who grinned his way through most of a deployment to Iraq.

The toddler doesn't yet understand that his daddy was one of the firefighter's friends, and that dad saw everything on May 25, 2007.

The memory of that day is why daddy sometimes thrashes and screams and wakes up drenched at 2 a.m. It's why he gets up to lock the front door, and lock it again.

Nor does the toddler know why, a couple of times a year, his mother drives him to Dee's house, so that the firefighter's wife can inspect him, hand him a gift, give him a hug.

A toddler can't grasp the details. But on Christmas morning, maybe a child's point of view is truer anyway. Because little Bailey Lee Cooper understands this: When he stops pinballing around the living room and looks up, a roomful of adults as tall as the Christmas tree look down at him, and for a fleeting second, everyone smiles together.

Spc. William Bailey III and Sgt. Craig Cooper sat maybe 7 feet from each other as they rolled out of the base's gate and down a dusty street in Taji, Iraq.

Bailey was behind the wheel — he'd just been moved to this armored truck and taken over driving duties.

Cooper, who had previously driven, manned the gun mounted atop the truck.

The pair had taken separate paths to Iraq, and they would take separate paths home.

Bailey, 29, of Bellevue, left the Nebraska National Guard, then re-enlisted in 2005 because he felt cheated that he'd never deployed.

The husband to Dee and father of five children and stepchildren juggled the National Guard, his job as a medical hospital dispatcher and a part-time gig as a volunteer firefighter. In 2006, Bailey was attached to the 755th Chemical Company at the last minute so he could get the deployment he desired.

Cooper, now 30, had joined the Guard before Sept. 11, 2001, but the deployment with the 755th Chemical Company was his first as well. Several months after shipping out to Iraq, he took his leave and visited his wife and two children in Glenwood, Iowa. That trip led to a shocker. His wife called him in Iraq: I'm pregnant again.

Cooper and Bailey first met at pre-deployment training. They had never seen each other's houses, or children. Their wives hadn't heard of each other until May 25, 2007.

On that day, the armored security truck drove out of the military base and rolled over an IED hidden in the dry soil.

The explosion rocked the truck and started it on fire.

Cooper, from his gunner position, was the first out. He fell to the ground, crawled away from the burning wreckage. Everything went black.

Bailey gave another soldier a push out of the vehicle, according to eyewitnesses. He was the last out. His foot may have gotten stuck, soldiers near the action say.

The following day, Dee Bailey heard a knock on her door, saw two soldiers standing outside, and knew.

That same day, a frantic, pregnant Jennifer Cooper received a call, and she knew, too.

“I'm OK,” Craig Cooper told her from his hospital bed. “But one of my friends is dead.”

* * *

Dee Bailey remembers the days before and after the funeral only as fragments, scattered pieces of sharp glass.

Signing important papers that she didn't read.

A steady stream of soldiers and firefighters stopping by the house, telling her how much they loved Spc. Bailey's smile.

Her son placing a flower on his father's grave.

Casseroles, sympathy cards, crying soldiers, crying firefighters and, in the middle of it, two women she didn't know, Jennifer Cooper and her mother, Rebecca Barrientos-Patlan.

They stopped by the house, introduced themselves as the wife and mother-in-law of the soldier injured during the attack.

Dee remembers Jennifer saying something about how she was pregnant, and she and her husband had talked it over. They had decided on the baby's name, the same name no matter if she had a boy or girl. Is that OK?

Dee nodded her head, agreeing that, yes, that would be a fitting tribue to Bill.

Craig Cooper came home in early December and tried to tape together his own shattered existence.

Hugs from family and friends at the homecoming ceremony. That 2-pound Super Burger he wolfed down at King Kong to celebrate. His old job. His old life. Normalcy.

But then he would drift to sleep in his own bed and it would shatter again. He'd relive that day in Iraq, and soon he would be yanking at the covers, punching at the air, trying to save the man he'd almost died with. Jennifer would retreat to the couch, scared that he'd accidentally hurt her in his sleep.

Only one thing kept Craig Cooper tied to reality in the weeks after his return, his wife thinks.

She was eight months pregnant, and the doctors predicted the baby would come early. He couldn't do much else, but he could give his newborn boy a name. The right name.

* * *

He was born 6 pounds, 8 ounces, with his daddy's chin and the biggest, bluest eyes his mom had ever seen.

He also was born with undeveloped lungs, so the nurses whisked him away into intensive care. His anxious parents stared through the glass, the baby hooked up to tubes and machines, fighting to breathe.

After a scary month, the baby was healthy enough to come home. That's when a strange thing happened, Jennifer says. Her husband, withdrawn since returning from Iraq, scooped his third son into his arms. Hugged him. Kissed him. Cuddled him. Comforted him.

“He never wanted to let the baby go,” she says.

One visitor successfully pried Baby Bailey away from his father.

Dee showed up at the hospital and hugged the baby tight. She gave him a present — tiny pajamas emblazoned with little red firetrucks and doggie firefighters in honor of her husband.

She smiled down at the baby. He smiled up at her.

And yes, she thought of her husband that day, but it wasn't happy or sad, angry or carefree.

It was just ... something.

“I've thought through this so much in my head, thought about how Bill would feel about this, just everything ... and it's so hard to put it all into words, to explain it,” Dee Bailey says.

“I know this, though. I want to be a part of Baby Bailey's life.”

Dee wants to be one of those adults watching over the toddler at this story's center, the young boy who tethers two families, links Iraq to Iowa, connects the end to the beginning.

Thirty-one months ago today, Spc. William Lee Bailey III — just Bailey to his friends — died on a dusty road in Iraq.

Tomorrow, Bailey Lee Cooper turns 2.

Contact the writer:

444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com

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