Tim Vakoc, 49, a Roman Catholic Priest from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Archdiocese died on June 22, 2009 from injuries he sustained from a roadside bomb while serving as an Army chaplain in Iraq. He died in a nursing home in the suburb of New Hope, MN.
Rev. Vakoc was injured in a roadside blast on May 29, 2004 while returning from celebrating mass with troops near Mosul. The injury cost him an eye and severely damaged his brain. The Major was hospitalized for four months at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. before being transferred in a near-coma to the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis in October 2004.
After many surgeries and infections, he was able to communicate with squeezes to the hand or a slight smile. In the fall of 2006, he was able to speak for the first time in 2.5 years.
The native of Robbindale, MN served as a parish priest before becoming an Army chaplain in 1996. He served previously in Germany and Bosnia, shipping out to Iraq shortly before his 44th birthday.
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