Photos courtesy of the Clowers family

Army Staff Sgt. Jesse G. Clowers Jr. was a proud father of his son, Jesse Clowers III, a former Cave Spring High School football player and a Virginia Tech graduate.

Jesse Clowers Jr. met his wife, Kaytie, at a Northern Virginia gym. They were the parents of a son, Jesse Clowers III, and a daughter, Danielle, whom the soldier never got to meet.

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In e-mails that spanned half the globe between Afghanistan and Roanoke, Jesse G. Clowers Jr. had been talking a lot recently about coming home.

A staff sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces, Clowers was sent overseas in March, when his wife, Kaytie, was seven months pregnant with their second child.

His homecoming in late September would be Clowers' first chance to meet his newborn daughter, Danielle.

"He was definitely counting down the days," said his sister Nikki Clowers. "Almost every e-mail he sent us, he was talking about how much he was looking forward to hugging his wife and playing with his son and meeting his baby girl."

"I really think that helped him keep going."

On Sunday, two days after Clowers sent his last e-mail, word came that he had been killed while on patrol. According to the Department of Defense, an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Nangarhar province, killing Clowers and two other soldiers. He was 27.

And now, friends and family members who had been looking forward to a happy reunion are instead commemorating Clowers' all-American life: country boy, Cave Spring High School football player, Eagle Scout, Virginia Tech cheerleader, Green Beret and -- most importantly to Clowers -- family man.

"He was a very devoted family person, a wonderful parent," Nikki Clowers said.

Standing 6 feet, 3 inches and weighing more than 230 pounds, Clowers could bench-press 400 pounds as easily as he could express his innermost feelings in public.

One family friend was struck by how Clowers, even as a teenager, would tell his parents and two sisters that he loved them, even as his high school buddies looked on.

"He was a gentle giant," said Jeremy Sartain of Nashville, Tenn., who was friends with Clowers at Cave Spring and Tech and stayed close to him over the years.

"But as big as he was, his heart was bigger."

Before he was deployed, Clowers had been stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, part of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group. His wife, who came back to Roanoke to have their baby, was in Fayetteville this weekend, getting their apartment ready for his return, when the bad news came.

Funeral arrangements had not been made by late Monday.

When Clowers was 14, his father died of a heart attack. Deeply affected by the loss, Clowers became the rock of the household, family members said, even though he was the youngest of three children.

Not long after his father died, Clowers had the initials JGC tattooed on his arm. On one side of the initials was the word "Sr." On the other side was "Jr."

So it came as no surprise that two years ago when Jesse and Kaytie had their first child, a son, they named him Jesse Gladden Clowers III. They called him Jay for short.

"He always wanted somebody to carry on the Clowers name," said Bo Bailey of Lynchburg, a close friend of Clowers'.

In high school, Clowers was the kind of team player who never complained, even as a dramatic growing spurt forced him to adapt from taking snaps as a quarterback to throwing blocks as an offensive lineman.

"He played all over the place," said Cave Spring principal Steve Spangler, who coached Clowers in the late 1990s.

"Selfish was not part of his vocabulary. It was one of those things that if he could help his team and his teammates, he was going to do it. That was just the way he was."

Clowers graduated from Cave Spring in 1998 and went to Tech, where he majored in business. His athletic abilities, competitive spirit and avid interest in Hokie football prompted him to try out for the cheerleading squad.

With no prior experience, he quickly made the team. "When he set his mind on something, he was not one who shied away from his goals," said Page Hill, an English teacher at Cave Spring who at the time was an assistant cheerleading coach at Tech.

After graduating from Tech in 2003, Clowers moved to Northern Virginia to live with his sister Nikki while he tried to decide what to do next with his life. He met his wife while working as a personal trainer at a gym.

Long interested in a career in federal law enforcement, and with a family life in mind, Clowers figured that he would improve his chances of getting a job with the FBI or the Secret Service if he had some military experience.

Family and friends worried at the time, to no avail.

Once he made up his mind, Bailey said, Clowers was "stubborn as a damn ox. I tried to talk him out of joining the Army until the day he took his physical."

Nikki Clowers said that her brother planned to do his tour of duty and then get out of the armed services.

Once he was sent to Afghanistan, Clowers was always vague about where he was or what he was doing -- often joking that he spent all his time lifting weights and playing video games.

His family knew better.

"He kept a lot of things to himself," his sister said. "I'm not sure if that was on purpose or if he was instructed not to talk about it. But whenever he talked to you, it was about what was happening with you, and the family, and Virginia Tech football."

In a recent e-mail, Clowers said he was being transferred to southern Afghanistan, where, "as he put it, the good guys needed a little extra help," Nikki Clowers said.

Clowers is at least the fifth military member with ties to Western Virginia to die in Afghanistan.

Although details of how Clowers was killed remained somewhat vague Monday, those who know him figure that he died in much the same way that he lived.

"He always took everything on his own shoulders," Bailey said. "He wanted to carry the load."