Wife had teleconference with soldier day before he was injured

NORFOLK

The day before Easter, Michelle Jordan got a special treat - a video teleconference with her husband, Sgt. Jevon Jordan, in Iraq.

With nieces and nephews and their daughter at her side, Jordan marveled at how good her husband of almost 13 years looked, and how nice it was to see and hear him laugh.

The next day, she got the call. Her husband had been badly wounded in an explosion and was being rushed to Landstuhl, Germany.

Jordan, a 32-year-old native of Norfolk, died March 29 of his wounds.

His family will bury him today at a veterans' cemetery in Suffolk.

He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. His unit left Fort Stewart, Ga., for Iraq in October, Michelle Jordan said Thursday.

It was his first deployment to Iraq.

Jordan's wife and his mother, Velda Brathwaite, flew to Germany after they got the news. He was in a coma.

"I'm glad I got an opportunity to see him, and hold him, and kiss him, and smell him," Michelle Jordan said. "It's still hard. But I'd rather have that time than to see him in a coffin like I did today, and not be able to touch him."

Karen Ellis was one of the family members alongside Jordan's wife, parents and children who waited on the tarmac Thursday when his casket arrived in Norfolk from Dover, Del.

"It was heartbreaking today, at the tarmac, where we were waiting for him," she said. "We just all lost such a vital part of our family."

Michelle and Jevon met at a Norfolk supermarket.

Jevon was buying a cake; Michelle, a college student, was working behind the bakery counter.

Jordan joined the Army in 1996 and served 3-1/2 years. Ellis said he worked as a rigger at a local shipyard until 2006, when he decided to return to uniform.

"Especially after the war started, he felt like that's where he needed to be," she said.

Michelle Jordan was taken aback by his decision, but supported it. "It was what he wanted to do," she said.

She described her husband as an avid athlete. A football player and track team member at Granby High School, Jordan played flag football at Fort Stewart, and she proudly clipped out the pictures and newspaper story about the team's victory last summer.

He loved to watch the New York Giants, his wife said, and play pick up basketball. He even had a Giants emblem on the license plate of his Camaro.

Jordan had a son, Tony, before they met, Michelle Jordan said.

He helped raise her two boys - Cory and Zakees, who was just 6 months old when they met - and together they had a daughter, Michelle Jevontae Jordan.

On Jevon Jordan's MySpace page, he envisioned the future.

"I have big dreams for me and my kids. I hustle to get what I need," he wrote. "The American dream is alive and well, and I plan on living it by any means. Remember, a peace of mind is worth more than anything in the world. There is no reason you shouldn't have it."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com