Checotah soldier honored in Afghanistan

CHECOTAH, Okla - A female solider from Checotah who paid the ultimate price while serving her country is being honored in Afghanistan. Army Specialist Sarina Butcher was killed in November. Now a portion of a new USO Center at Bargram Airfield has been named in her honor.

"There's just no words for it. She was such a good person," says Kaci Coleman. "For someone to go like that - at such a young age, she never really lived her life."

Coleman, Jenna Harrington and Aubrella Bailey become close friends with Sarina Butcher when they joined the Checotah High School cheerleading squad.

The 19-year-old army specialist died November 1, when she was struck by an improvised explosive device while deployed in Afghanistan. She was the first female soldier and youngest member of 45th Infantry to die in combat.

"I talked to her two weeks before (she died) and I asked her about her daughter," says Harrington. "She was telling me that she was serving in the war for her daughter - and wanted to make sure she would have a better life."

Over the weekend, USO opened its ninth facility in Afghanistan and its second at Bagram Airfield. At the request of Butcher's fellow soldiers, the organization named the facility after her.

The center provides entertainment, internet access, snacks, music and library facilities to more than 30,000 military personnel that are stationed at Bagram or who are passing through. Butcher's friends call the memorial a fitting tribute to the outgoing and entertaining young solider.

"It's cool to think I was friends with her. I actually got the opportunity to know the kind of person she was," says Aubrelle Bailey. "And now with her being memorialized, other people can get a sense of who she was too."

Coleman tells 2NEWS, "Sarina is probably smiling and happy right now. And everybody that knows her is too."

Butcher's former mother-in-law Jeramie Butcher says Sarina's family is humbled by this honor - and they are working to keep her memory alive on the home front for Butcher's daughter Zoey, who will be three years old in August.