Soldier from Roxbury killed in Iraq

[unhappycamper]

Joan Duran planned to become a college math teacher.


Soldier from Roxbury killed in Iraq
By Javier C. Hernandez, Globe Correspondent | August 13, 2007

They called him Superman. He could outrun pit bulls on neighborhood streets and lift hundreds of pounds over his head. When his car flipped over three times on a highway, he pulled a shred of glass from his eye and calmly walked away. He even dressed the part, filling his closet with Superman T-shirts and sleeping under Man of Steel bedsheets.

But on Friday, the family and friends of Army Sergeant Joan Duran, 24, of Roxbury, received word that the man they considered a superhero had been killed in Iraq when a bomb exploded while he was picking up supplies.

Duran, who was born in the Dominican Republic but moved to the Boston area as a toddler, was due home in November after four years of service in the Army, family and friends who gathered outside Duran's Regent Street apartment said yesterday.

He was planning to become a college math teacher, buy a new house, and finally marry his fiancee, Andrea Silva, 17, of Woburn, said Remy Peña, one of his close friends.

"He was a hero. He always had passion for everything he did," said Peña, 26, a friend since childhood whom Duran called Batman. "Whether it was tennis, carpentry, or cooking, he was always the best."

Silva, who became engaged to Duran last year, said Duran was "the nicest guy I'd ever met."


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[Breeze54]

1. Terrible! I was looking for this story.

:(

[Marrah_G]

2. It seems like it's always the best among us

A kid from Roxbury, going somewhere, living the American dream, gone now. So sad. I can't stop crying this morning (thank god my boss is on vacation)