Fallen soldier Brittany Gordon as 'uncommonly brave and uncommonly kind'

Mourners recall soldier Brittany Gordon as 'uncommonly brave and uncommonly kind'
Tampa Bay Times
By Kameel Stanley
Times Staff Writer
October 28, 2012

ST. PETERSBURG — Cedric Gordon spent many days alone in his living room, hoping he would never see a stranger in uniform walking to his door.

As the father of a deployed soldier, it could only mean something bad.

But Gordon, St. Petersburg's assistant police chief, tried to put it out of his mind. He learned to comfort himself.

His baby served in an elite unit. People were praying for her. What were the chances she wouldn't make it home in December from her first overseas assignment?

On Oct. 13, Army Spc. Brittany Bria Gordon, an Army intelligence analyst, was killed when a suicide bomber attacked her unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan, becoming the first female soldier from Tampa Bay to die in the recent wars.

The 2006 St. Petersburg High graduate, the only daughter of Cedric Frank Gordon and Brenda Thompson Gordon of St. Petersburg, was 24.

"I kept asking God: Why Brittany? Why my daughter? Why my baby girl?" Gordon told a standing-room only crowd gathered for his daughter's funeral Saturday at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church. "But I know that knowing God is better than knowing why."
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