Legacy of War: Gonzaga ROTC staff remember Mathew Fazzari as ‘the best of what America can turn out’

Mathew Fazzari was everything the leaders of Gonzaga University’s Bulldog Battalion wanted in a cadet.

“He came to Gonzaga and burned a track record second to no one,” said Jerry Rolwes, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who photographs the university’s ROTC program.

Fazzari, a Walla Walla native, graduated in 2010 among the top 5 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Army officers in the nation. At Gonzaga, he double-majored in math and philosophy, led the school’s Ranger Challenge team to victory in a regional competition and mentored younger cadets. Rolwes said he also played in the school jazz band, where he wrote his own music.

“He was a strong, committed, caring leader. He connected with everybody,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Alan Westfield, who staffs the ROTC program.

While at Gonzaga, Fazzari married his high school sweetheart and had a son. Westfield fondly recalls seeing Fazzari at Zags basketball games with his young son, Dominic, in a carrier. His second son was born soon after graduation.

The family then moved to Fort Rucker, Alabama, where Fazzari graduated first in his class from flight school in April 2012.

Three weeks after graduating, Fazzari was deployed to Bagram Airfield in eastern Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division. He was on a recon and surveillance mission with his commander, Capt. Scott Pace, when they got a distress call from troops on the ground. The platoon had been protecting provincial Afghan leaders on their way to a meeting when Taliban insurgents ambushed them. Fazzari and Pace didn’t hesitate.

“In the face of battle, they were on a different mission, they went to the sound of the guns,” Westfield said. Their actions saved lives on the ground, but Fazzari’s helicopter took a hit in the process.

“Somebody got a lucky shot that hit a hydraulic line,” Westfield said. The helicopter crashed, killing Fazzari and Pace on June 6, 2012.

His death reverberated throughout the Gonzaga community, resulting in an “outpouring of grief around the planet,” Westfield said.

In the more than two decades he’s spent at Gonzaga, Westfield said, the ROTC program has graduated over 300 lieutenants like Fazzari who went into the Army. Most have seen combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, but only Fazzari and another first lieutenant, Forrest Ewens, have given their lives.

“Even those that didn’t know them, everybody feels the pull, the pinch and the pain,” Westfield said. And while much of the country glorifies musicians or comic book characters, “these are authentic heroes,” he said.

Gonzaga named its leadership development trainer award after Fazzari following his death. The award is given to a senior cadet who best lives up to Fazzari’s “fiercely loyal” example of leadership, as voted on by the junior class.

Rolwes knows many of the cadets in Gonzaga’s program, but he remembers Fazzari especially fondly.

Once, Rolwes was telling Fazzari a story about his grandson, who pulled the fire alarm at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in the middle of the consecration of the Eucharist. Fazzari started laughing and told Rolwes he was in church that day. “That was a showstopper!” he said.

Fazzari’s widow is private and doesn’t like to talk about her husband, but Westfield and Rolwes are in touch with her regularly.

“Her husband was a hero, but I don’t think she wanted a dead hero,” Rolwes said.

Rolwes is enthusiastic sharing his memories of Fazzari, but he still tears up talking about the young Italian-American man who wasn’t afraid to kiss his sons in public and worked so hard to set an example for other cadets.

“He was the best of what America can turn out,” he said.