SSG Adam Sheda, 26, died as he lived - experiencing life to the fullest.
"You only live once," he was reportedly fond of saying, "- and sometimes not even. I have lived!"
The 1999 Wrenshall High School graduate had just returned from a 22-month deployment to Iraq a week earlier when he was shot to death at a residence on East Fifth Street in Duluth at approximately 3:40 a.m. last Saturday morning, June 30.
By the following night, a 25-year-old man had been arrested by Duluth police in relation to the shooting.
Police said their investigation showed Sheda had been killed by a single gunshot to the head, thought to have come from a small-caliber handgun later found at the scene.
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The name of the man in custody had not been released at the time this issue of the Pine Journal went to press, and he remains in custody at the St. Louis County Jail awaiting charges.
Sheda, the son of Tony and Paulette Sheda of Wrenshall, served with the National Guard's Charlie Company 136th Infantry, who had just returned from Iraq on June 23 to a joyful homecoming welcome in Grand Rapids.
Prior to joining the National Guard, he served in the United States Army for three years, stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany. Following his discharge, he enrolled at Lake Superior College in Duluth and later worked for Ulland Brothers of Cloquet.
As his family gathered to make funeral arrangements on Monday, they remembered him as a son, brother and uncle with "a heart of gold."
"We want him remembered for the wonderful man he was," commented his sister, Suzy Berger of Cloquet.
"Adam had a wonderful sense of humor and loved to make people laugh," the family wrote in a statement released Monday. "During his travels and adventures alone and with the military, he made friends wherever he went. He always reached out to others in his travels."
And in fact, unknown to his family at the time, Adam donated money to orphanages in Russia and Kenya.
"We discovered when we read his will that he had left money for the orphanages as well," said Berger. "He had been studying Russian while he was in Iraq and was planning to spend three months there in the fall. Whenever he went anywhere, he really immersed himself in the country."
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Berger added that at one point Adam sent money home to one of his sisters and asked her to buy as many toys as possible with it and then send them to him in Iraq.
"He'd give them to kids as he was out on patrol around the country," Berger explained
Adam was exceptionally proud of his family tradition and that he was following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who also served in the United States Army.
"Adam always wanted to join the Army and entered in the Guards in order to serve in the war," the family statement indicated. "It was something he felt he had to do."
A Mass of Christian Burial for Adam Sheda is planned for 11 a.m. Thursday, July 5, at St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church in Gary New Duluth.
