1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs

Story by Mike MacLeod

CAMP RAMADI, Iraq – On Oct. 29, while a 25 year old Department of Defense civil service specialist provides intelligence on the Iraqi human landscape – history, culture, religion, insurgent groups – to Navy SEALs and paratroopers of 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division Advise and Assist Brigade in Al Anbar province, Iraq, a major American university will be hosting a dinner in his name.

The first "Lee Bagan Endowment Dinner" will be held Oct. 29 on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas, to recognize the endowment's supporters and to attract further financial support for a scholarship fund for gifted University of Texas students struggling with debilitating learning disabilities.

In spite of a reading disability, Bagan was the top student in UT's Middle Eastern Studies undergraduate program in 2005, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in only three years. As part of a master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies earned from UT in 2007, he learned Arabic, Persian, Tajiki and Hebrew.

"Lee Bagan is a what they mean when they say 'gentleman and a scholar'," said Aaron Bar-Adon, an international scholar and former professor of Bagan's. Bar-Adon fought in Israeli's 1948 Arab-Israeli War, known by Israelis as the War of Independence, and was instrumental in the subsequent transformation of the Hebrew language.

Amy Hendrick, who was a disabled student also studying under Bar-Adon with Bagan, said that her classmate rekindled a student group that gave voice to the disabled on UT Austin's sprawling campus.

"What he did for the disabled on campus is just amazing," said Hendrick, currently a graduate coordinator for the Folklore and Public Cultures Department at UT. "It's a big campus, and it's an old campus."

"Old architecture is often unfriendly to disabled persons," she noted.

After serving as the principal Middle East and Central Asia subject matter expert for Navy SEAL Teams 7 and 10 and for Marine Corps Regimental Combat Team 8 in western Iraq in spring and summer of 2009, Bagan began supporting the 82nd Airborne Division's advise and assist brigade.

The brigade, 1/82 AAB, is a new tool in the Army's arsenal, developed specifically to nurture the growth and capacities of Iraqi civil and military institutions.

Bagan was recently recognized by the Marines Corps for expert consultation in support of military operations and praised Bagan as undaunted as a forward deployed subject matter expert.

"[Bagan] went out on virtually every mission with us and provided expert and reliable economic, cultural, and political analysis and advice for the Rutbah [Iraq] area," said 1st Lt. Raphael Clarke, former team leader of Civil Affairs Team 1, Detachment West, Regimental Combat Team 8.

"He was our no bull resident academic. We called him 'Professor,'" said Clarke.

In addition to his professional and academic pursuits, Bagan is an undefeated heavyweight boxer and hours away from earning his private pilot's license.

Bagan is originally from Chicago.

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