Twice in fourteen months, the Rochester community is saying goodbye to soldiers killed while serving in Iraq.

Tuesday, they paid their respects to 24-year-old Army Sergeant Nicholas Patterson.

He and six other soldiers died last Monday in Baghdad in a non-combat related accident.

Patterson's closest friend and colleague over the last three a half years, says it will not be the same without his right-hand man.

Sergeant Patrick Meyer says, “He had a heart that would shadow the world.”

It's a man he's only known for three years, but Meyer says he feels like he's saying goodbye to one of the best men he's ever met.

He says, “Top of the line, he had no equals.”

A top of the line soldier, son, husband friend, father, and ball player at Rochester high school is how Sergeant Nick Patterson is being remembered.

Meyer said, “Nick always put his men before him and everyone else he met, so I just learned from Nick's example and I'll carry on with my job.”

Meyer will also carry on with a promise he and Patterson made to each other on assignment in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. He says, “To be here for his family.”

Meyer welcomes Patterson's family with open arms--his wife Jayme and his four year-old son Riley.

He says, “Nick had a lot of plans for Riley. It's hard. You hear so many stories about someone's family you've never met and you fill in the gaps and you try to comfort them.”

Patterson's funeral service will be held at the Rochester High School gymnasium at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.

The public is welcome.

A private, family burial will follow.