Today we remember a young American Fallen Hero…National Guard Pfc. Sarina Butcher.

I’ve had the honor to spend time with her family. Sarina wanted to be a NURSE when she got out of the US Army. Butcher, 19, was killed in Afghanistan’s Paktia Province, 11/1/2011, when the vehicle in which she was riding was hit by a roadside bomb. She was the first female Oklahoma National Guard soldier to be killed during wartime and also was the youngest Guard member to die in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

“She was fun-loving,” Butcher’s grandfather, Clayton Mills, said during the funeral. “She would make a joke out of anything to get people to laugh.”

Butcher came from a military family, following in “her grandfather’s and brother’s footsteps,” the Rev. Rayford Mills, Butcher’s great-uncle, said.

“She was barely 5-foot-2, and her heart was bigger than she was,” he said.

Rep. Mike Ross said she will be remembered for more than being so young when she died.

“She will be remembered for being an outstanding soldier,” Ross, D-Ark., said.

Butcher is survived by her mother, Dana Bailey and stepfather, Howard, of El Dorado; her father, James Mills and stepmother, Cheryl, of Checotah, Okla.; her daughter, Zoey Butcher, of El Dorado; grandparents, Clayton and Martha Mills, of Checotah and Betty Terrell, of Hope, Ark.; and her brother, Anthony “Tony” Mills, of Ely, Nev.