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GREENSBORO — You’d figure Alex Sigmon would be on the fast track to something.

A few years ago, after college, he came back to his hometown and bought two houses, started a career and met a hometown girl he plans to marry.

But this summer, he’s going to war.

It’s hard for his family to comprehend. To them, he’s their reserved son, their baby brother. Just the blond-haired kid with no bangs, gum stuck in his hair, hugging his teddy bear and asking for Oreos.

But in June or July, Alex will go halfway around the world, to some place in Iraq he can’t disclose, and become an Army detective. There, he’ll fight the enemy.

His mother, Jackie, winces when she thinks about it.

She still remembers that conversation three years ago at Southern Lights restaurant. She was wrestling with the declining health of her parents when Alex, her youngest, her only son, broke the news to her.

“Mom, well, since you’re already crying, I might as well tell you,’’ he said, “I took the oath today.’’

“What does that mean?’’ she asked.

“I joined the Army,’’ he responded.

She laughed. He didn’t. This wasn’t “Stripes.’’ This was serious.

“Not my baby!’’ she said, crying. “You’re a smart guy! Don’t you realize there’s a war going on?’’

Alex, 29, isn’t what you’d call the rah-rah military type. He never did ROTC or talked about the military. He doesn’t come from a family with a long military history.

He came from Greensboro’s comfortable class. And he excelled. At Greensboro Day, he was the soccer goalie, the All-State tennis player, the captain of the wrestling team and senior class president.

At the University of Georgia, he was Phi Gamma Delta’s pledge class president. He spent a year abroad, studying at Oxford University, before graduating cum laude with degrees in criminal justice and political science.

Then, he came home. To start a job in the financial industry, plant roots and begin his life, danger-free.

But somehow, something along the way changed.

You could chalk it up to his drive to serve. Alex helped start a scholarship in memory of his longtime friend, a Montagnard he had known since seventh-grade who died of cancer in 1997.

Y-Bler Buonya (pronounced ee-bler) was a soldier, too.

Or maybe, you could chalk it up to that cell phone conversation he had with his dad, a sales and marketing executive, that fateful day in September 2001.

“Depending on the outcome,’’ Mike Sigmon told his son, “Your generation will be the ones fighting this war.’’

Nearly eight years later, 1st Lt. Alex Sigmon is doing just that.

Two weekends ago, during a deployment ceremony in Raleigh, Alex stood with 480 other citizen-soldiers and said his first of many goodbyes.

His family sat at midcourt, in the bleachers of a high school gymnasium. They took picture after picture as a cross-section of North Carolina — fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, all ranging in age from 18 to 59 — prepared for war.

When Alex leaves for Iraq, he’ll take with him a small cross, a small prayer shawl and a pair of dog tags from World War II.

The cross and prayer shawl come from his dad’s church, St. Francis Episcopal Church in Greensboro. The dog tags come from his mother.

They belonged to his grandfather, bomber pilot Eddie Elkin.

“Mom, don’t worry,’’ Alex told her. “I’ve got Granddad’s dog tags.’’

But she will. So will her husband, her daughter and her future daughter-in-law, Janet Derfel, a graduate of Grimsley High and N.C. State.

They’ll keep in touch through e-mail and the Internet’s telephone-calling software Skype. They won’t follow the news. They’ll follow their faith.

And for Jackie, a high school math teacher, that means standing in her sunroom, at midnight, looking across the street to Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church.

She’ll stare at the statue of the Virgin Mary, above the sanctuary door, bathed in fluorescent light. Then, every night, she’ll repeat four simple words.

“Please. Protect my son.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com.