War casualty had roots in Limestone Woman recounts son’s path to becoming a soldier

BANGOR – Three weeks before he was to leave Iraq, Master Sgt. Robert Horrigan was the first through the door at an enemy location with his team from U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

Horrigan, who at 40 had survived several tours in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, was killed on June 17, 2005.

War updates in the media listed Horrigan from Austin, Texas, where he had graduated from high school and enlisted with his twin brother, John – and where the soldier is now buried.

But it turns out that Horrigan was a Maine native, born in Limestone where his dad, John, was stationed in the Air Force.

The family later spent three years in Guam, said his mother, Mary Alice Horrigan, a Bangor resident originally from Belfast. But they returned to Maine and lived in Belfast for seven years until the boys were 13.

As children, they were explorers, their mother said, “into the woods, into the streams, into the trees.”

One time she remembers in particular, “I could hear them, but I couldn’t see them. They were sliding off the roof of a three-story barn!”

As a teenager in Texas, Horrigan evidenced the determined attitude that would carry him through a military career of nearly 20 years.

His mother told of his completing a 25-mile race, “even though he had trained for only 15 miles. Once he set his hand to doing something, he finished it.”

Stateside, Horrigan most recently had been stationed out of Fort Bragg, N.C., where he lived with wife, Denise, and daughter, Courtney. An avid outdoorsman, he made knives for his own business and planned to become a master bladesmith after leaving the Army.

In 2002, the soldier was described in “Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda,” by Sean Naylor, a journalist who was embedded with troops in Afghanistan. “Bob H., a stocky 6-footer from Austin, Texas, often functions as a pack mule for his team, carrying the heavy loads for those who could not keep up.”

Horrigan’s mother understands well that as part of Special Operations, her son’s story is one of details not shared, but she has her own memories.

“As a baby, this one was always laughing,” she said. “He was so gentle. He wasn’t a show off. But he did what he felt he needed to do.”

Horrigan believed in his country’s mission, but he also respected that his mother held different beliefs.

“Robert was OK with me saying, ‘There must be a better way,'” she said quietly.

Long before her son was killed, she could be found among those opposing the war in front of the federal courthouse in Bangor, carrying her own sign: “Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home.”

Robert Horrigan was among those who were the subject of a tribute in a recent issue of Texas Monthly, which featured a small color picture and brief information on every serviceman and woman from the Lone Star State killed in Iraq.

There were articles, too, with “two fair views,” as Mary Alice described the magazine. “I thought it was well-done.”

She’d like to see such a publication in Maine because so many have been killed. “And there’s so many of them who have come back maimed and hurt,” she said.

And what good would it do to publish all the names and pictures of those who have been killed?

“I want people to see their faces,” said Mary Alice Horrigan, mother of a boy from Maine who died one year ago today.