Bon Aqua, Tenn. ? The brightly painted wooden sign in the yard marks the home as “Grandma & Grandpa’s House. Hugs & Kisses. Love & Laughter. Candy & Cookies.”

But now there are only tears and heartache.

Grandpa was Sgt. Roger Dale Rowe, a Tennessee Army National Guardsman who was killed by a sniper July 9 as he drove a tanker fuel truck in Iraq. Rowe died five days before his 55th birthday, making him the oldest American casualty since the start of the war in Iraq.

“He always told us he wasn’t scared of war. He wanted to fight or do whatever he could so that his kids and his grandchildren wouldn’t have to,” Mart Rowe said Thursday as mourners remembered his father at a Nashville funeral home.

Sgt. Rowe, known to his seven grandchildren as “papa,” certainly did his part in fighting for his family, serving a tour in Vietnam as an Army surgical technician and then spending the past 17 years in the Tennessee Army National Guard. Rowe even volunteered for active duty during Operation Desert Storm but wasn’t called up.

This time, Rowe didn’t hesitate when a National Guard unit in northwestern Tennessee needed truck drivers.

In honor of Rowe’s service and sacrifice, his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Billy Taylor, presented the family with his posthumous Purple Heart and Bronze Star medals Friday. During graveside services Friday, soldiers from Fort Campbell Army post on the Tennessee-Kentucky border performed a rifle salute and “Taps” was played on bagpipes.

At the funeral home, an empty soldier’s uniform hung from a brass easel to the right of a coffin draped in an American flag. But the heart-shaped arrangement of red carnations drew the eye.

Zachary McCrory, 6, watches the graveside service for his grandfather, Sgt. Roger Dale Rowe, as his grandmother and Rowe's wife, Shirley Rowe, left, holds a U.S. flag. Rowe, a Tennessee Army National Guardsman, was killed by a sniper July 9 as he drove a tanker fuel truck in Iraq. Services for Rowe were Friday in Bon Aqua, Tenn.

In the center was a snapshot of a gray-haired Rowe, grinning and enveloped by his grandchildren. Ribbons dangling below spelled out their names — Brandon, Chandler, Zachary, Bryant, Hannah, Eli and Chase. In white carnations were the words: “Papa’s Pride.”

“He lived for his grandchildren. They brought out the kid in him,” said Mart Rowe, one of Sgt. Rowe’s four children. “Sometimes we had to tell him to quit running around the pool and chasing them with a bucket of water.”

They all live nearby — some just down the street — and spent most weekends together. Rowe had built a huge deck around the swimming pool for the grandchildren, who ranged in age from 2 to 10, and planned to build a large clubhouse when he returned.

A Nashville native, Rowe met his wife Shirley when they were neighbors at age 10. They attended Glencliff High School together and married at 21 before he shipped out to Vietnam.

He was a small, wiry man who loved to stay busy, Mart Rowe said, recalling how his father fully restored the yellow and white house that the family moved into 21 years ago in Bon Aqua, about 35 miles southwest of Nashville.

The last few years Rowe worked with son Mart at Shiloh Industries, an automotive parts manufacturer. Co-worker Connie Winchester said she wasn’t surprised that Rowe went to Iraq.

“They’re going at all ages now. And for a small guy, he was very strong.”