Absolute heart-breaker of a story tonight, guys. I've had an opportunity this year to write about some brave men and women who have survived war in one form or another. Well, this is a sobering reminder that not everyone gets to come home.
John Pryor called home every day.
It didn't matter if rockets were exploding in the sky above him, or if the streets of Iraq ran red with blood. He always took a few minutes to let his wife, Carmela Calvo, hear his reassuring voice.
On Christmas Day, Calvo's phone went silent.
She tried to allay her fears when she read about an unidentified U.S. soldier who had been killed near Mosul. Pryor, an esteemed trauma/critical-care surgeon at the University of Pennyslvania, must've been working on the poor solider, Calvo told herself.
She kept believing that scenario until a few military officials arrived at her Moorestown, N.J., home and delivered the gut-wrenching news: Pryor, 42, a trauma surgeon with the 1st Forward Surgical Team, had been killed by an enemy mortar round.
The mortar round had apparently been blindly fired at the Mosul Air Base and landed in a trailer where Pryror was sleeping, not long after he got back from Christmas Mass, said his brother, Richard Pryor. "This was not an assault or a barrage," he said. "Someone fired a single, sporadic blind shot to see what it would hit ... and it hit my brother."
In a mere instant, Pryor's family lost a loving son, husband, brother and father of three. And both Philadelphia and Iraq lost a widely-admired doctor who treated his career as a calling and was devoted to helping people, regardless of their race, ethnicity or social status.
I'll post the rest of the story up tomorrow. Meanwhile, keep John Pryor's family in your thoughts.
May the lord bless your soul and accept you into his kingdom for all the good that you have done. My prayers to your family and colleagues.— noignoranceaccepted- Dr. John Pryor was an American hero....the best of the best! My condolences are offered to his loving family.— Vigilant
- A TOTAL WASTE OF REAL TALENT. WAR - BA - HUMBUG— jtw
Dana DiFilippo has covered murder, mayhem and miscellany at the Daily News since 2000. She grew up in Delaware County and studied journalism and photography at Penn State University. E-mail tips to difilid@phillynews.com.
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Stephanie Farr has been reporting for the Daily News since 2007, covering everything from gay porn stars who entered the burglary business to moon trees, skinheads, murders and naked bike rides. She covers crime, both in the city and suburbs, and keeps clippings of bizarre Associated Press articles. Her favorite this year was the story about the drunk in Punxsutawney who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead opossum. E-mail tips to farrs@phillynews.com.
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Phillip Lucas joined the Daily News crime team in 2011. He grew up on the mean streets of Seattle and studied journalism and psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Before landing in the City of Brotherly Love, Phillip was a reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. Email tips to lucasp@phillynews.com.
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Morgan Zalot is the newest crime reporter at the Daily News, starting in 2011 after interning at the paper twice as a Temple University journalism student. In her past stints at the DN, she covered just about everything, from drunken Phillies fans to a barber shop in a high school to a grisly murder-suicide. She’s a born-and-raised Philly girl who grew up in the Northeast. E-mail tips to zalotm@philly.com.
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