Remembering Fallen Soldier U.S. Army Spc. Garrett Fant

Garrett Fant, the 21-year-old U.S. Army soldier who died Sept. 26, 2011 in Afghanistan, left a legacy South Lake Tahoe can be proud of, friends and family say.  The young man, who attended South Tahoe High School and considered South Lake Tahoe his home, will be remembered for his personable nature and affable character. For as young as he was, he was a gentlemen and treated everyone around him with dignity and respect, including those he didn’t personally know. 
“He was as generous and kind and as they come. He was the kind of brother who you’d randomly hear older people say ‘what a nice young man’ after he’d open doors for them or pick up something off the ground they dropped or ask them how their day was going. He was that way around everybody. It is something everyone who didn’t know him should know about him,” said Shanna Askins, Fant’s 33-year-old sister. 
Fant died in Helmand Providence, Afghanistan after being wounded by an improvised explosive device on Sept. 26, 2011. He was assigned to the 4th Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, in Fort Riley, Kansas. He was an indirect fire infantryman who was on his first deployment. His awards included the combat infantryman’s badge, NATO medal, Afghanistan campaign medal with one campaign star and the Army service ribbon.

'He was a Giver'
Quiet but not shy, introverted but also, sometimes, the dry-witted funny man in the room dropping quick one liners, Garrett Fant was one to ask questions — not for the sake of questioning or to antagonize or belittle — but because he was genuinely interested in subjects such as history and current events. Growing up, he was the teenager who steered clear of trouble and preferred to read or play video games instead of partying like many his own age, family members said.
“He was a giver and it was pretty obvious to anyone who knew him that once you were a part of his life, you were in it for good,” said Julie Farrell, his mother. Like many teenagers, Fant would rotated between family members at Lake Tahoe and at American Canyon near Napa. Family was important to him and he made it a priority to be with both sides of his family. He left South Tahoe High to get an early GED so that he could fast-track his enlistment which was in March 2009, his family said. 
He was also a young man who knew structure and discipline were areas he desired. That’s why the military was important to him, his mother said. He was disciplined and when he put his mind to something, there wasn’t anything that could stop him. He told family members while at home for a brief R&R visit in late May that once he finished the Army, he was going to enroll at Lake Tahoe Community College to get his core classes out of the way and then move on to a university to study history. He was scheduled to return from Afghanistan in February 2012. 
“He really had his mind made up that he wanted to teach high school and he wanted to teach history and social studies,” recalled his uncle Chip Towle of South Lake Tahoe, adding the two would chat regularly on Facebook. “I remember saying to him ‘you know wouldn’t you want to reach kids at a younger age, like middle school, that way you can shape them?’ and he said, ‘No way. When you’re in high school, you’re looking for that teacher who’ll point you in the right direction. I want to be that teacher.’”
His mother, Julie, recalls having the same conversation with him.
“He told me he wanted to make a difference. He told me, ‘Mom, I think I would be good at keeping high school kids out of trouble.’” But first things came first and that meant finishing his four-year service commitment, which he was less than a year away from completing before he died. 

Desire to Serve
Even as a young teenager, he said he admired servicemen and wanted to be one himself. His brother, James Keough, also had plans to enter the service, only James decided he would enter the Navy.
“That’s the thing about Garrett. He was set on going in and kept telling me that was what he was going to do,” his mom said. “So when the time came, he was around 17 or so, and he said, ‘Mom this is what I’m going to do and I’m doing it’ I really didn’t take it well and he knew it. But he had to do what he had to do.”
His brother James Keough, 27, had a different take. It was more like a friendly sibling rivalry, where the pair would exchange friendly jabs about each other’s preferred military branch of service. 
“The Army was all he ever talked about and as we got older he would always talking smack, saying the Navy was for squids. That’s what he’d call me: A squid,” said Keough, who is scheduled for deployment soon to the Middle East. “Even though he was my little brother, we always had that ongoing joke we’d ride each other on.”
Keough called his brother a great American, a wonderful brother and a hero to the United States. 
“My brother served his country and did so with great honor,” he said. 
Fant is the third serviceman tied to South Shore who has died in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Army Sgt. Timothy M. Smith, 25, a life-long South Lake Tahoe resident, was killed April 7, 2008, after his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device in Baghdad.
Pfc. Phillip Brandon Williams, 21, died Oct. 9, 2006 by sniper fire while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Williams was the son of South Lake Tahoe Police Sgt. Brad Williams and lived at South Shore and in Carson Valley. Fant is survived by his mother Julie, father John Fant of American Canyon, Calif., sister Shanna of Placerville, brother James of San Diego, grandmother Beverly Towle of South Lake Tahoe, grandfather Robert Fant of American Canyon and numerous aunts and uncles.