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As a student of history, Army Col. Canfield "Buddy" Boone knew the significance of all of the major battlefields and cemeteries honoring those who fell in battle in the Washington, D.C., area.

Their proximity was one of the reasons the 53-year-old Indiana native was willing to move to Washington to take a job with the Pentagon in 1990.

After the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Boone's old personnel office will now join that list of battlefields, and he will soon be buried in its most famous cemetery, Arlington National.

"Buddy would have liked that," said Linda, his wife of 31 years.

Born and raised in Milan, Ind., Boone went on to earn a major in history and political science at Butler University in Indianapolis, where he met his wife.

The couple had three sons, 23, 21 and 18, for whom Boone coached baseball over the years "and being a Hoosier, of course, basketball too," his wife said.

After graduating from college he started student teaching, but then took a job selling insurance.

During the Vietnam War, Boone signed up for the National Guard, doing weekend drills and a couple weekends every summer.

But he stayed in the Guard part-time until deciding to go to active duty with the Army in 1986. For five years with the Army, he taught ROTC at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, beginning a full-time career he loved.

"He was very patriotic. And I think he liked the order of it and the feeling that he was really doing something for his country," his wife said.

Profile courtesy of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.