Lance Waldorf
Major, United States Army Reserve
April 18, 1968 – June 2, 2008
Age – 40
Bingham Farms, MI
Operation Enduring Freedom
414th Civil Affairs Battalion, United States Army Reserve, Lansing, MI
Became “One of 22 A Day” on June 2, 2008
MAJ Lance Waldorf died of a self inflicted gunshot wound at Great Lakes National Cemetery. He was wearing military fatigues and a handgun was found nearby. A note, a will, a backpack and photographs of Waldorf with his wife as well as friends and family were with him.
“The war had a great deal to do with this,” said Lana Waldorf, about her husband’s death. Waldorf said her husband suffered from post-traumatic stress and increasing depression after returning home from serving as a civil affairs specialist in Afghanistan. “He had nightmares,” she said. “He didn’t tell me the details. What husband wants to share the horrific ordeals of war with his wife?”
Waldorf, a chartered financial consultant for Merrill Lynch, served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and was expecting orders for a third deployment. He returned home in March 2007 from his last assignment in Ghazni, Afghanistan, as a part of the 414th Battalion, a unit from Southfield.
She said she only learned the severity of her husband’s depression from post-traumatic stress when she discovered a document on their printer referring to an appointment at a Veterans Administration hospital.
As she reflected on his life and death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a veterans’ cemetery, she also knew he could not share his deep suffering with those closest to him. “His desire to be at peace in heaven was greater than the thought of enduring any more pain,” she said of her husband who twice had been deployed to Afghanistan and soon was expecting to receive orders for a third deployment.
Waldorf said she supports military efforts in Afghanistan. And one of her husband’s proudest moments in Afghanistan came in 2004, at the end of his first tour, when he was with a group of soldiers feted by villagers.
They feasted on a whole cow, an honor, and a village elder gave Lance Waldorf his ring. “The man wept openly,” Lana Waldorf recounted. “He said his children and his children’s children would remember what Lance did for his people.