Honoring The Sacrifice of SGT Steven DeLuzio

In this special episode, I am remembering the 9 year anniversary of the death of my brother, SGT Steven DeLuzio. I’m sharing memories and lessons learned from losing someone so close to me. Links and Resources: Norwich University Corps of Cadets Infantry Blue Cord Fort Benning, GA More About SGT Steven DeLuzio SGTStevenDeLuzio.com Iraqi woman gave soldier four more years   Transcript Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into the drive on podcast. Today I’m doing a special episode. Special to me anyway. 9 years ago this week on the 22nd of August 2010, my brother, SGT Steven DeLuzio was killed in action in Afghanistan. And I wanted to make sure this episode was dedicated to him and his service. A few weeks ago I had Chris Weir on who also lost his brother in combat. One of the things Chris said was that he wanted to make sure his brother’s memory continued to live even though he was gone. I couldn’t agree more with that. I feel like the more we do to keep the memory of these soldiers alive, the better. So with this episode, I’m going to talk a little about my brother and how he impacted my life. My brother was about 3 years younger than me. Growing up we always had that big brother, little brother complex. We’d fight, but then get right back to playing together. Even though I had the upper hand at home and usually won our fights, outside of home we always had each other’s backs. Steve played hockey in high school, and eventually went on to play in college at Hofstra University. While he was there he sort of fell into the wrong crowd and started to not focus on school as much as he should. His grades slipped and I think he even ended up failing a couple classes. He realized he was heading down a path he didn’t want to be going down. Late night parties and drinking replaced the studying that he should have been doing. He came home one day and said that he wanted to transfer to a military college. The idea was that he’d get more discipline and focus there. Eventually this led to him transferring to Norwich University in Vermont. While he was there, he definitely got some discipline. His entire day was planned out for him, including early morning PT, class time, study time, meals, everything. He didn’t have time for all the other partying that he had when he went to Hofstra. Not surprisingly, his grades improved. At some point while he was at Norwich he had talked to an Army recruiter about joining the Army National Guard. A friend of his at Norwich was already in the guard and told him all about it. He ended up joining in a delayed entry program, and went to basic training at Fort Benning, GA in the summer of 2005. While he was in basic training, the seed had been planted in me. I knew I wanted to join the military as well, but I was in a bit of a different situation than he was. I already had graduated college and had a full time job. It sort of scared me thinking that I might get fired if I asked for a few months off to go join the Army. It turns out I didn’t have to worry about that because by law my employer couldn’t fire me for that. I didn’t know that at the time though. When Steve got out of basic training, I told him my plans and asked him to talk me out of it. I had basically made up my mind that I would join, but I wanted him to give me all the cons all the negatives to joining. While he tried his best, ultimately he failed, and I enlisted in the CT army national guard in November 2005, just a few months after he ha...