Mountain View man, 26, killed in Najaf fighting

As daily battles raged around Lt. Ken Ballard in Najaf, Iraq, his mother in Mountain View sought comfort in the odds that her son was one of about 138,000 soldiers -- and in his e-mailed assurances.

"Don't worry about us," he wrote to Karen Meredith of Mountain View. "We know what we're doing."

Karen Meredith kept that e-mail, like she kept all the e-mails, instant messages, letters and photos that her only child sent to her from Iraq, along with all the messages from friends and family saying how proud they were of him. She planned to make a book for him. He'll never see it.

Ballard died late Sunday night in Najaf when he was hit by small arms fire during a battle with insurgents, according to the Department of Defense. He was part of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment of the 1st Armored Division. He was 26.

Ballard was born in the seventh month of 1977, weighing in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces. He was the perfect child for a single mother, Karen Meredith said: easygoing and good in school, recovering from a rebellious patch in junior high school to earn a 4.0 grade point average in college. "He was such a good man, that I was proud to call him my friend, too," she said in an emotional interview Tuesday.

Ken Ballard graduated from Mountain View High School in 1995 and immediately joined the Army, traveling to Bosnia and Macedonia with the 1st Armored Division. After three enlisted years, he won an ROTC scholarship to study at Middle Tennessee State University, earning a bachelor's degree in international relations and a commission as a second lieutenant in 2002.

There were many things drawing Ballard into the Army, his mother said. He was the fourth generation to enter the military -- both his great- grandfathers served in World War II, his grandfather in Korea, and his maternal aunt, Cathy Patton -- a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve -- pinned on his bars.

Ballard also was drawn to service by a wonder of history and strategy, his mother said. He had long hoped to travel to Germany with his mother, who was born in Heidelberg when her father was stationed there. At Christmas in 2002, they talked about traveling there for the next year's Christmas.

But in February, he was deployed to Europe, and his mother had few illusions.

"Ken's going to Germany," she told people. "But that's just Army code for one step closer to the desert."

The Internet and modern telephone technology kept Ballard and his mother close after he was deployed. He sent photos of himself and his tank; she posted them on a Web site -- www.mindspring.com/~karenmeredith/ -- titled "Lt. Ken Ballard, my hero!" Once they chatted on a Web cam, and she got to see him smile.

The conversations were stories of the tank driver who sent a loader out into a firefight to fetch an MRE (meals ready to eat) and apologized afterward; the RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) that punched a hole in his tank; the riots in San Francisco as protesters took to the streets against the war.

"We're doing our job," he would tell her. "We're doing it so they can do that." And she would tell others the same, sending notes about her son to friends and family, keeping them in the loop.

He was supposed to be home in April, originally -- he even got packed for the day. They planned a party for May 22. Then new orders came down -- he was held for 120 days. The party was rescheduled for Labor Day.

On Thursday, he called. He told her about the continuing battles in Najaf, what he could, anyway. They said "I love you," like they did every time. And that was all.

Karen Meredith was out on Memorial Day morning when a neighbor called to say she had a visitor at home. She asked if it was bad news.

"She said, 'Yes, I'm so sorry,' " Karen Meredith said. "And she started crying and handed the phone to the sergeant."

She posted the news - "In Memoriam" - on the Web site. And then she began to see the ripples of her son's life. The e-mails she had been sending to friends and family, she discovered, had been sent on to others. The Web site was visited by people she had never heard of.

And as news of her son's death spread, they began to write. Friends and family first, then others, by the dozens. Some simply began, "You don't know me, but ..."

"I must have well over 100 e-mails from this morning," she said. "People I worked with long ago, Ken's school friends that are sharing stories. And the e-mail is so important to me because that's the way I heard from Ken."

For a son raised by a single mother, it was like Ken Ballard suddenly had hundreds of parents, she said. And they were all proud.

"He was a good man. I want people to know that," Karen Meredith said. "He was an all-American boy. He was everybody's son."

E-mail Matthew B. Stannard at mstannard@sfchronicle.com.

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