Mike Francis

When the bomb exploded beneath the Humvee carrying the Oregon National Guard’s Kenny Leisten Jr., Vince Jacques and three others down the Iraqi road in July 2004, it not only ended Leisten’s life and severely wounded Jacques: It became the unlikely start of a profound and durable bond that brought four dozen or so people to the entryway to Camp Rilea last weekend.

They included Oregon National Guard veterans who were there on that terrible day, spouses, children who were born years later, and, at the center of it all, Ken Leisten Sr., the father who lost his 20-year-old boy-turned-soldier 20 years ago.

Leisten is now a silver-haired 61-year-old whose life was transformed not just by loss, but by the unexpected bonds forged with Jacques, John Rosander, Shawn Jenkins and others who last saw his son alive, as well as with numerous others who make up a circle of people who embrace and care for one another.

Leisten, clad Saturday in a black T-shirt and wearing his son’s dog tags, has a booming voice and an ebullient manner. Twenty years ago, he responded badly, even violently, when the U.S. Army’s casualty notification officers arrived at his door. A single father, he was tormented by grief that, for a time, became despair and addiction. But now he is many years sober and filled with purpose, as well as love for the veterans who knew his son. “I live for Kenny,” he declared, more than once, last week. Being with these guys, he said, “is like medicine.”

At Camp Rilea, where Kenny Leisten Jr. served before he deployed to Iraq, the friends gathered beneath the recently erected highway sign that declares this stretch of U.S. Highway 101 to be “FALLEN HERO MEMORIAL HIGHWAY Ken “Kenny” Leisten U.S. Army.” They ate hamburgers, drank beer and watched Camp Rilea staffers lower and raise a massive American flag in Kenny Leisten’s honor. Most of the conversation wasn’t centered on the events that brought them together, but in reconnecting with one another, with updates on their families, travels and tribulations.

As with any group of diverse people with different beliefs and life experiences, they’ve seen their share of grief and heartbreak. When someone was in such pain that he acted self-destructively, Jacques and Leisten were among the first to appear at the hospital, to draw close and serve as living reminders that brothers — and sisters — care for one another. It was a role that Jacques took on, as he recovered from his wounds suffered 20 years ago, when he became a leader of the Oregon National Guard’s developing reintegration program, to help Oregon troops return to civilian life. It is a role Leisten took on because he has become a member of this family that has borne the battle.

Leisten knows more keenly than most how precious life is, and how love can triumph over trauma. And he isn’t shy about reminding anyone. He feels he owes his own life to the men who served with and cared for his son. Without them, he said, “I wouldn’t be here.”

You can see these brothers, bound by service and by love, every year at noon on July 28, the anniversary of Kenny Leisten’s death, when they gather with his father at the graveside at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland.

And you can be reminded of their bonds born of sacrifice every time you drive past the Kenny Leisten highway sign on U.S. Highway 101 in front of Camp Rilea.