After 8 Years in National Guard Iraq Veteran Dies

Heartbroken family searching for answers after veteran’s suspected overdose death

The Citizen's Voice
BY BOB KALINOWSKI
PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 6, 2018

The Citizens’ Voice interviewed Houck the day his unit, Bravo Battery of the 109th Field Artillery, left for Iraq in September 2008 for a yearlong deployment. His twin sons, then 9-months-old, were in a stroller by his side for the departure.

A local family is mourning the death of an Iraq war veteran from a suspected drug overdose.

Stephen Houck, who served eight years in a local Pennsylvania Army National Guard unit, was found dead inside his Wilkes-Barre apartment on Thursday. He was 32.

Funeral services with military honors will be held today at the Kielty-Moran Funeral Home in Plymouth following a viewing 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

“I was so proud of him. I told him how proud of him I was,” Houck’s mother Gloria Blizzard said Monday about her son’s military service.

Houck, a Larksville native, is suspected of taking a lethal dose of the synthetic opioid fentanyl and heroin, she said.

Blizzard, 70, of Noxen Twp., reached out to The Citizens’ Voice to notify the paper about the military funeral and a police investigation into her son’s death.
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