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Parents of Wilfahrt – who was killed after repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – campaign against state gay marriage ban On Sunday, Jeff and Lori Wilfahrt will travel to Hawaii to join other US military families welcoming back the third platoon of the 552nd military police company from Afghanistan. For the Wilfahrts, the unit’s return from its deployment near Kandahar will be a sad and poignant occasion. Their son Andrew Wilfahrt, a member of the unit, was the first openly gay US soldier to die in combat since Barack Obama repealed the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in December last year. Two months after homosexuals were officially allowed to serve, Wilfahrts was killed when an improvised device exploded under a bridge in Afghanistan. “Even though we are acclimatised to his absence now,” his father Jeff Wilfahrt told the Guardian, “it will still tear our hearts out.” Andrew Wilfahrt’s story is an extraordinary one. Despite coming out to his parents at 16 and campaigning for gay rights at his high school, he decided he wanted to join the army when he was 29. He told a friend he wanted to join up so that a soldier with a wife and family would not have to. At first he hid his sexual identity, sticking a picture of himself with a close woman friend “curled up against his chest” in his locker. “When he joined in 2009 there was a big question mark,” Jeff Wilfahrt said. “He didn’t know how people would react to him. So he deepened his voice and built up his body, because before he was a real skinny guy. And he spoke in a more masculine manner.” Fiercely intelligent, Andrew Wilfahrt scored top marks in the army’s aptitude test. He was also a former peace activist who enjoyed classical music. “He was very compartmentalised in his life,” Jeff Wilfahrt said. “He would not talk about his military life. He went by the book of military discipline and was very careful what he said.” Soon after being posted to his unit in Hawaii, his father believes Wilfahrt had told some fellow soldiers of his sexuality. Soon most of them were aware. Talking to his mother last November he told her: “Mom, everyone knows. Nobody cares.” Wilfahrt joined up after taking discreet advice from a gay ex-Marine on what he might expect as a homosexual in the US armed forces. That Marine, interviewed earlier this week by the news channel CNN and identified only as “Dan”, said Wilfahrt had told him he wanted to be a soldier to protect someone with a family. “He wasn’t making a statement. He was doing it for everybody else,” Dan told the television channel. “He will forever be my hero because he joined for the right reasons. He was a silent part of the gay community, but it’s just unspeakable how big an impact he’s had now.” Jeff Wilfahrt remembers the night his son told them of his decision to join the military. “It was an evening meal in mid-December. I was encouraging him to get his butt into gear and apply for colleges in the spring. We said we would find a way to pay for his tuition in the fall. “He raised his head and said, with a shit-eating grin, that he was going to join the army. My wife was very concerned but I was pleased.” It was still, however, a surprise for the parents of an out gay man. “He was not that big on the ‘gay community’,” Jeff Wilfahrt said. “He loved men but he didn’t feel he had found a depth to his [male] relationships and wanted something more.” That something more was a “comradeship” he found among his accepting comrades in his military police unit. Andrew Wilfahrt said he could speak more openly with them than he could his gay friends back home. “He didn’t act particularly gay,” recalls his father. “I mean he didn’t flaunt it though … some of the outfits he walked out of this door wearing!” And since his death his parents – who describe themselves as “lefties” – have dedicated themselves to attempting to prevent their own state of Minnesota, home to conservative presidential hopefuls Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, from enacting new legislation defining marriage as being only possible between a woman and a man, high-profile activism that Jeff Wilfahrt admits his son might have felt uncomfortable with. On 27 February – two months after Obama signed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Wilfahrt’s unit was crossing a bridge that it had passed a “hundred times before.” This time, though, an improvised explosive device detonated underneath the bridge, killing Wilfahrt. Another American was injured. Wilfahrt’s family believe their son shielded him from the full force of the blast. “We would be so proud if Minnesota became the first state to reject a law defining marriage in terms of bigotry,” added Jeff Wilfahrt on Wednesday night. “It would be a memorial to our son.” Gay rights US military Minnesota United States Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk