Wednesday, November 19 2003 @ 04:21 PM MST
Contributed by: tomw
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 RecordOnline.com -- Middletown ? Out front, an American flag swayed in the breeze. On the front porch, a yellow ribbon.
Upstairs, in the corner of the dining room, was a basket containing Irving Medina's scuffed soccer ball. In the kitchen, crammed around memorial candles and photos last night, a family was in tears over the death of their son and brother.
Ana Medina lit her son's memorial candle on Friday after a West Point officer and a chaplain in full dress uniforms knocked on the door. In the vestibule, they told Ana her son was killed earlier that day in Iraq.
Army Spc. Irving Medina, 22, was killed when his convoy came under fire and was struck by a homemade grenade, apparently thrown by an Iraqi insurgent. Irving died instantly in the streets of Baghdad.
Then came the knock, one of 400 such knocks since the war began. But this one was here.
"I had forewarned them before I left about them coming," said Ivan Medina, 22, Irving's identical twin brother. Ivan recently returned from 11 months in Iraq where his Army unit took part in the first wave of attacks there.
"I told them no news is good news," Ivan said. "But news came. And like always, it was bad."
The Medinas all thought that Ivan had faced the worst of the fighting, in the beginning.
"We all thought we'd see him again," said Jorge Medina, Ivan's father, a robust man who shook when he tried to hold back tears.
"I heard her crying and came over and, in Spanish, she told me to tell them to go away, to get out of here," Jorge said, pressing his big hand into his eyes.
In the dining room, a TV cameraman straddled the basket with Irving's soccer ball and Ana Medina wanted to hide. She shook, embarrassed by all the attention, she said.
"We all are taking it a bit differently. She is shy," Ivan said.
Jenny Medina's hands were shaking as she held her brother's last e-mail, a message he had sent to a friend. His older sister is a sergeant in the Army Reserves assigned to JAG in Coral Gables, Fla.
"It has been a real experience out here," he wrote in the e-mail. The next line: "I've seen some of the saddest things out here."
Serving in a combat team in the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, Irving had befriended a slew of Iraqi children when not working. He made a special friend in Safi, a 10-year-old Iraqi boy. On the dining room table sat pictures Irving had sent of Safi and himself playing.
Safi was killed in a bombing.
Irving and Ivan were born in Mexico City. When the twins were 6, Jenny, Ana and Jorge moved to Middletown.
At Goshen High School, Irving played varsity soccer. He loved the game, even more than he loved the Yankees.
"And he was nuts over the Yankees," Jorge said.
When asked about his former student, the first thing Goshen High School Principal Bob Litz said was Irving loved soccer.
After graduating, before enlisting, he would teach soccer to local children through a program at Orange County Community College, where he was studying. Irving thought he might be an accountant like his aunt and uncle, Ivan said. But like any 22-year-old, he wasn't sure yet.
After Irving enlisted, he was sent to Fort Riley, Kan. While there, he fell in love. Leslie: That's all the family knows. Her name is Leslie.
"He told me he was going to propose when he got back. That was to be in March. We all wanted to meet her. We new nothing about her, but he loved her," Ivan said.
Ivan assumed he would've been the best man.
Ivan is the practical one; Irving was the protecting brother. "I would be the one to get things done," Ivan said. "Irving was the one who would make sure no one messed with me or our family."
Ivan, who serves in the Army chaplain division, also admired his brother's gift for gab:
"We were a good team," he said. "He could talk very well, he was charming. He knew what to say and how to say things to people. He wasn't mean. But knew how to get the truth out in a good way."
The twins were so inseparable, they even shared a bed.
When they lived in Mexico City, the twins had one bed. When they came to Middletown, Jorge bought another bed.
"But we kept sneaking into each others' bed," Ivan said.
"Finally, I said 'why did I buy two beds, if you sleep in the same,'" Jorge said.
Father and son laughed; the TV cameraman still straddled the soccer ball.
"I wish I could curl up with him right now. I always thought he'd be back," Ivan said.
About 400 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. The British military has reported 52 deaths; Italy, 17; Denmark, Spain, Ukraine and Poland have reported one each.
Since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq had ended, more than 260 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq.
Medina is the second area soldier killed in the Iraqi war. In late March, Army Sgt. Eugene Williams, 26, of Highland, was killed after a suicide bombing in Najaf, Iraq, where he was stationed.
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