Hi, my name is Alex Melendez.

20 years ago yesterday, my family got the news no family wants to get, that my uncle, Staff Sergeant Brian Lee Morris, was killed in Iraq. My uncle was a larger-than-life person, someone who was a family man, who would always go above and beyond. After enlisting in the Army in the late '80s, cancer forced my uncle into temporary retirement from the Army in 1989. He beat cancer and re-enlisted and served in Bosnia during the mid-'90s conflict, Germany, and South Korea. He was deployed to Afghanistan for 2 tours after 9/11 and when we invaded Iraq, was sent in 2003, both times with the 360th Transportation Company, 68th Corps Support Battalion, 43rd Area Support Group out of Fort Carson, Colorado.

He was on his 3rd tour, while already getting his retirement paperwork in order, after nearly 20 years of service to this country, killed when his M915A1 tractor pulling a 7500-gallon tanker rolled over near Mosul, Iraq.

The reason we are doing this GoFundMe is to raise funds to honor my uncle along the highway here in Michigan, so that his story is never forgotten, and that all who travel along it will know that he served his country with honor and gave the ultimate sacrifice to protect others.