Spc. DJ Stelmat still caring for Iraqi children even after death

Stuffed animals sent to Iraq to remember N.H. soldier
LITTLETON, N.H. (AP) Children in an Iraqi hospital soon will be hugging stuffed animals from New Hampshire.
Joanna Fekay is organizing an effort to send the toys to Iraq in remembrance of her boyfriend, D.J. Stelmat, an Army medic who died in Iraq in March.
The stuffed animals include a tag with Stelmat's photo and will be sent to a hospital he frequently visited. Collection boxes have been placed around town in Littleton and other communities asking for $3 donations to cover the cost of shipping the toys to Iraq.
Information from: New Hampshire Union Leader, http://www.unionleader.com/

Spc. David Stelmat comforts a crying Iraqi baby during a medical mission with Headquarters Company, 2nd Combined Arms Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment at the al-Alwiya Iraqi police station in Baghdad on Dec. 12, 2007. (SPC. NICHOLAS HERNANDEZ/JOINT COMBAT CAMERA CENTER)

Medic from NH killed in Iraq
By SCOTT BROOKS
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Monday, Mar. 24, 2008

A 27-year-old EMT from Littleton who went to Iraq to heal the wounded was killed Saturday by a roadside bomb, family members and the U.S. military confirmed.

Spc. David "D.J." Stelmat was a former U.S. Army infantryman who fought on the front lines in Afghanistan. He later traded his gun for a first-aid kit as a medic with the New Hampshire Army National Guard in Iraq.

"All he wanted to do was help people," said his father, David Stelmat of Centerville, Ohio. "That was his whole purpose in life."

Spc. Stelmat was traveling in a Humvee with two other soldiers when a roadside bomb exploded, according to the National Guard. All three soldiers were killed.


Family members said a plane carrying Stelmat's body was set to land at Dover Air Force Base last night at 10. The funeral will be held in New Hampshire, they said.

A 1998 graduate of the Profile School in Bethlehem, Stelmat was a life-long outdoorsman who, as an adult, gave up the comforts of a family home so he could live in a tiny shack in the remote woods of Franconia. He spent three years in the shack, denying himself the convenience of electricity and running water, his mother said.

"I swear, he was born in the wrong century," said his mother, Maryanne Rennell of Littleton. "We lived in a nice house, and he knew he had a bedroom here. But he preferred to live in the wild."

His stint in Iraq was a second chance to serve his country after a harrowing tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2003, his mother said. Stelmat left Afghanistan two months early with a general discharge -- "neither honorably nor dishonorably," his mother said -- after laying down his gun in defiance of a superior's order.

A sense of remorse propelled him to rejoin the service, this time as a medic, Rennell said. This time, she said, "he did not want to carry a gun to kill people. He would rather fix what happened."

His girlfriend, Joanna Fekay, 27, said Stelmat described his work in Iraq as rewarding. "It made him feel very needed," she said.

A photograph taken last December shows Stelmat comforting a crying Iraqi baby at the al-Alwiya Iraqi police station in Baghdad.
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