enlarge Courtesy Emery Family

Army Cpl. Blair Emery was serving an extension of his second tour of duty when a bomb killed him Friday.

enlarge Courtesy Emery family

When Betsy Siegfried, left, and Hilary Emery, center, joined the Army, those choices influenced their brother, Blair Emery, to sign up after he graduated from high school, his family said.

Click here to see the location of Lee, Maine

For the second time this year, the tiny town of Lee is grieving the death of one of its own in Iraq.

Cpl. Blair William Emery, a star baseball player who followed his two sisters into the Army out of a sense of patriotism and uncertainty about what to do with his life, was killed Friday as he manned the turret gun in a Humvee in Baqubah.

Emery, 24, was in a military police company, completing his second tour of duty in Iraq, when a roadside bomb killed him instantly, his family said. He had been due to return to Maine in November, but the Army extended his tour of duty.

His family wanted him back badly, but was comforted by news that the number of casualties in Iraq had dropped in recent months.

"I listened to too much radio and read too much 'It's dying down, calming down,'" said his father, Earl "Bill" Emery. "When you see that vehicle drive in your dooryard, it's quite a life-changing experience," he said, recounting the official Army notification that his son had died.

Emery is the 36th service member with Maine ties to die in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His hometown of 845 people still was aching from the death of Joel House, who was 22 when he died in Taji, Iraq, on June 23. House and Emery were good friends who played sports together at Lee Academy.

Joel House's father, Paul, has been at the Emery home, giving the family the benefits of his painful experience.

"Their son sacrificed his life; so did mine. The least I can do is help," House said. "We had support from family, friends, strangers. It meant a lot. I just think that's the proper thing to do, just being a good old Mainer."

The lives of the Emerys and the Houses are intertwined. The parents went to school together, and each couple had three children who grew up together.

Joel House and Blair Emery were pals, and they even had eaten breakfast together as they crossed paths in Iraq, Earl Emery said.

"My heart broke when Joel died," said Hilary Emery, Blair's sister, who was stationed in Kuwait when the war broke out. "His sister and I were pretty friendly, growing up, and his brother was in my grade. It just seemed unreal."

Emery's family had been optimistic that conditions were improving in Iraq. The surge of troops seemed to be working, with fewer American casualties, but the price of that improvement was longer tours of duty.

Emery's five-year contract with the military was to expire in October and his yearlong deployment was to end last month. Emery stayed in Iraq because the military extended deployments three months.

"He got killed in the extension, and it really hurts," his father said. "If he could have been out of there on time, he could have been in Maine, home with us."

Lee, about an hour's drive northeast of Bangor, has a single general store, a modest ski mountain in Mount Jefferson, and woods that are popular with hunters in the fall. Many residents work in the paper mill in neighboring Lincoln.

Emery's death has dominated conversation at Raymond's Variety, the gas station and diner that is the central meeting place in town. It also has rekindled the sadness of House's death.

"How come it happened?" said Paula Raymond, the store's owner and a lifelong resident of Lee. "Two of them here, within six or seven months. How come it happened to us?"

Emery grew up in Lee and was never eager to leave, his family said. He enjoyed high school, where as a senior left-handed pitcher he helped the Lee Academy Pandas win their first Eastern Maine title in years.

He was happy to enjoy the woods, whether setting out in search of deer or moose, or sneaking off with his parents' pickup truck to go "mudding" on back roads.

"He was a jokester," said his sister, Betsy Siegfried. "If he thought he could do something goofy to make you smile and laugh, he was...