Nino D Livaudais

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SYRACUSE, UT, USA U.S. Army SSG, COMPANY A 3D BATTALION 75TH RANGER REGIMENT, FORT BENNING, GA 31905 IRAQ 04/03/2003

Army Staff Sergeant Nino D. Livaudais was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States with his mother, Divina, who lives in Syracuse. His late father Howard, an Air Force veteran, was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. Nino graduated high school in Ogden, Utah in 1997, joined the Army a year later and became a Ranger in 1999. He planned to make the military a career. He was station in Fort Benning, Georgia and was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.

As an Army Ranger he had been assigned to Afghanistan twice. Iraq was his third combat tour in two years. On April 3, 2003 he was killed at a coalition checkpoint near Haditha Dam in western Iraq when they approached a vehicle while attempting to help a screaming pregnant woman. In an apparent suicide attack, a bomb in the vehicle detonated, killing the two female occupants along with Nino and his fellow servicemen Captain Russell B. Rippetoe and Specialist Ryan Long.

According to statements released through Fort Benning, his family remembered Livaudais as a humble man who cared for the less fortunate. “He was always looking out for others,” Jackie Livaudais said. “He’d pile needy men into the back of his pickup and take them to McDonald’s where he’d buy food for them.” Nino is survived by his wife Jackie and their two sons, Destre 5 and Carson 2. At the time of his death his wife was pregnant with the couple’s third child.

Nino’s portrait is also located on Poster 1