Staff Sgt. Andrew Lee Bossert
Born: October 1, 1980 in Lancaster, Wisconsin
Died: March 7, 2005 in Ramadi, Iraq
SSgt Andrew L. Bossert, of Fountain City, Wisconsin, was tall and muscular. He played basketball and baseball for the Cochrane-Fountain City School and graduated in 1999. After spending a semester at the University of Wisconsin in Stout, he enlisted in the Army to not only serve his country, but to obtain the financial help in completing his college education. Andy wanted to become an architect more than anything. He was stationed in Korea for the next two and a half years, and it is there that he met Olga, who was from Russia and working as a schoolteacher in Korea. They married on December 9, 2002. In August of 2004, Andy was deployed to Iraq, assigned to the Army’s 44th Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division based at Camp Howze, Korea. He was part of a team that helped build roads, bridges and clear mines. Andy was much respected by his fellow soldiers for his honesty, the way he cared for others and his work ethic. Most of the work he did was in the night hours, which suited him to a tee; he was always a night owl. Home for a leave between Thanksgiving and Christmas, his family noticed how grown up he had become. On March 7, 2005, Andy and another soldier were killed when a vehicle-borne IED detonated at a checkpoint they were passing through. His fellow soldiers called Andy a “ray of light in a dark place.” He was buried in Cassville Cemetery in Cassville, Wisconsin. Andy was survived by his wife; parents, Steve and Diane; a brother Timothy; and sister Amy among many other relatives. Andy’s parents had a flag flown over the United States Capitol in honor of his sacrifice. In the fall of 2009 they traveled to Warren, Maine with that flag. Andy’s cousin Karen Sawyer and her husband Jay have a home there and fly a flag from a patriotic truck parked along Route 90. They started the tradition after 9-11. Andy was special to the Sawyer’s; he had been the ring bearer at their wedding when he was two years old. Mr. and Mrs. Bossert presented the flag to Karen and Jay and it was flown in honor of Andy. The Andrew L. Bossert Scholarship Fund was established at his high school and $500. is awarded each year to a male or female student who also played basketball to further their education. Andy was promoted posthumously from sergeant to staff sergeant.
The Staff Sgt. Andrew Lee Bossert by Freedom Remembered, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
