IN MEMORIAM.......These BRAVE Men and Women died.......FOR US

[AirForceRocks]

Originally posted by WillyJ
Matbe you have everyone else snowed here "Silky" . . but your agenda is obvious to me. .

Not everyone Willy...

 

[Silky]

Willy, Air Force, thank you for your touching comments on a Memorial thread for dead American heroes..........

 

[MaryAnnDVC]

Do you think it's kind of like what a "former" DISer used to do on heartbreaking threads about the loss of a child...shrieking about there being no God when people just wanted to come together to share and comfort each other? But I think the agenda is different....

Where's that mirror?

 

[Silky]

Thank you Mary Ann for your thoughtful comment

 

[Buckalew]

I agree with Silky, MaryAnn.

Great comment.

 

[Buckalew]

While we all agree with the poster's thread, I'm sure, because we are all grateful to the men and women who have served our country and have given their lives for our freedom, we really should not 'attack' the messenger of this thread.

While we don't agree on much, I think we agree that some of the comments are much more about the past with this poster instead of the topic at hand.
So, while my comment above is still true to me, it probably has no right to be in this thread.
Sorry.

 

[Silky]

Sergeant Brendon C. Reiss, 23, Casper, Wyo.

4-17-03

"As a child, Brendon Reiss often went hunting and fishing with his father and heard stories about his time as an Army helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam. Reiss' stepmother believes those stories fostered his desire to become a Marine. Among them were tales of how Brian Reiss went missing in action three times, only to make it out all right each time. Brendon Reiss went missing March 23 after Iraqis ambushed his unit with rocket-propelled grenades while it was trying to secure a bridge near the southern Iraq town of Nasiriyah. His remains were identified Friday, April 11.

"It's been very hard on (Brian)," said Brendon's stepmother, Carol Reiss. "The same thing he dodged in Vietnam - RPGs - shot down his son."

Brendon Reiss grew up in Hanna, Wyo., before moving to Port Angeles, Wash., to be with his father and then to Casper to live with his mother and finish high school.

A strapping, handsome young man, he played football and basketball and ran track, his stepmother said.

Reiss joined the Marines after high school and signed on for a second four-year stint. He served as a machine-gun operator with the 1st Battalion, 2 nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, based in Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Married to Tensley Reiss, who lives with her family in Cleveland, Tenn., he had enormous strength of character and knew exactly what he wanted to do, Carol Reiss said.

In addition to his wife and parents, Reiss is survived by a sister, Lindsey, of Casper. He will be buried this week in Chattanooga National Cemetery."

 

[Nikole]

Originally posted by Buckalew
While we all agree with the poster's thread, I'm sure, because we are all grateful to the men and women who have served our country and have given their lives for our freedom, we really should not 'attack' the messenger of this thread.

While we don't agree on much, I think we agree that some of the comments are much more about the past with this poster instead of the topic at hand.
So, while my comment above is still true to me, it probably has no right to be in this thread.
Sorry.

Attacks aren't appropriate. No matter what the circumstances no matter how we disagree. However, we also shouldn't have to tolerate the same propaganda over and over. Apparently it is true, that people don't change nor do they learn. (And before someone tries to call me on the carpet and say that's an attack......no it's not, it's not directed to anyone by name nor is it name calling or personal, it's simply pointing out that we've been here before.)

 

[Planogirl]

I don't CARE what Silky's agenda is. Attacks are unfortunate right now (and I agree that Nikole's comments aren't attacks). While Silky may have a history, it's a shame to mess up this thread at least until he shows his hand.

Thanks for posting these Silky. And if you do have an agenda at least post it elsewhere and don't ruin this thread.

 

[charlie,nj]

Nice thread Silky....

Our VERY BRAVE men and women are fighting and dying for US….so that THIS ** never happens again…to us or our loved one’s. THANK YOU to those brave men, women, and their families!

**(7 meg load..took 10 min to load on dial-up..10 min slide show with music)

God Bless America!

 

[Silky]

Corporal Randy Kent Rosacker, 21, San Diego

3-28-03

"Marine Cpl. Randy Kent Rosacker was a military kid who spent much of his youth in San Diego, where his father served in the Navy. His heart, however, remained connected to his native Colorado, family and friends said, and his body will rest in Colorado. Rosacker, a machine-gunner with the 1 st Battalion, 2 nd Marine Regiment, based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., was among nine Marines killed Sunday, March 23, near An Nasiriyah when Iraqi soldiers used the white flag of surrender as a ruse to launch a surprise attack.

Rosacker was born in Alamosa and lived briefly in Colorado Springs before his father’s Navy career took the family to San Diego.

At 10, Rosacker resolved to be a Marine. At 19, he fulfilled that dream.

In between, he was a standout athlete at San Diego’s Serra High School, where he lettered in three sports. He passed up college athletic scholarships to become a Marine.

He showed leadership and a bulldog tenacity in sports and life, friends and family said, and during one football season played three games with a broken arm.

"All kinds of colleges wanted him playing for their schools — wrestling, football," said his father, Rod Rosacker, a submariner who lives in Bremerton, Wash., and returned from sea duty the same day Marine Corps officials knocked on his door. "He turned it all down to go to the Marines."

Rosacker would have been 22 years old April 15.

Rosacker was a gung-ho Marine, with a large American flag tattooed on one bicep and an eagerness to be where the action was. Rod Rosacker said he isn’t surprised his son was among the conflict’s first casualties. "He was out there doing something he believed in, and he always told me that this was what was going to happen to him someday," he said. "He was going to die on the battlefield. It was his life." Randy Rosacker’s tough exterior hid a soft side. He was protective of his sisters, Samantha and Antoinette.

While growing up, Rosacker regularly returned to Colorado for vacations and summer breaks to enjoy the outdoors and visit with family. His maternal and paternal grandparents live in Alamosa. An uncle, Jeff Rosacker, lives in Colorado Springs. Jeff Rosacker said his nephew was "just a super kid" who shared the family’s love of fishing and the outdoors. "We’re definitely going to miss him a lot," he said.

In his last message home, Rosacker told Samantha that when the war was over, he wanted to return to Colorado for a family reunion, "to make it," he wrote, "like the old times." His return, and that reunion, will be on a decidedly sadder note".

 

[Silky]

Lance Corporal Thomas J. Slocum, 22, Thornton, Colo.

"For Lance Cpl. Thomas J. Slocum, being a Marine went beyond building a career. The Marines were the perfect course for molding a life.

"The term ‘gung-ho Marine,’ that was him," said Stanley Cooper, Slocum’s stepfather.

"This boy was a character. This boy had charm. He was outgoing. People loved him, and the Marines gave him confidence." Slocum, 22, was one of nine Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., who died March 23 in an ambush near the city of Nasiriyah. Slocum, from the Denver suburb of Thornton, was assigned to the 1 st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

"We believed it was right to be going over there," Cooper said. "He believed it before we ever talked to him." Nearly two months after being sent overseas, Slocum was dead. "His mother had a feeling," Cooper said. "When she got the (deployment) call, she had a feeling. You prepare yourself, but now we’re numb. You freeze. You can’t believe this can happen to you. "We’re very proud of him, and we consider him a hero." Slocum graduated from Skyview High School in 1998. During Slocum’s junior year, he enlisted in the Marines.

"One part of the family wanted him to sign up, and one part didn’t," said Cooper, a Navy veteran. "He made the decision himself. . . . He loved it."

Slocum served in California, Okinawa, Japan, and Camp Lejeune. He re-enlisted for another four-year tour in 2002.

Before leaving for Iraq, he and friend Kristy Urbanic talked about moving in together when he returned, she told The Denver Post. Urbanic, 22, and Slocum had known each other since fourth grade.

"I took a picture of you and (Urbanic’s daughter) Zoe and put in the pocket closest to my heart always," he wrote in a letter she received Monday.

"It does not matter if Zoe is not mine," he wrote in another letter. "All that matters is that I love her, teach her and protect her."

Slocum also is survived by a sister, Ann, 20."

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

<font color=navy>So young. These are great tributes.

May their sacrifice go for naught for peace in the Mid East and for us.

God Bless them and their families.

 

[Silky]

Private Ruben Estrella-Soto, 18, El Paso, Texas


4-9-03


"Ruben Estrella-Soto joined the Army last year right out of high school to pursue a dream of being an engineer.

He saw the military as a way to help him get an education.

But those plans were dashed when Estrella-Soto was killed after he and fellow crew members of the 507 th Maintenance Company were captured in an ambush in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.

He is among nine members of his unit from Fort Bliss, Texas, to be confirmed dead. U.S. officials say a convoy of vehicles from the 507 th took a wrong turn March 23 and was attacked 230 miles from Baghdad.

The 507th was sent to the Persian Gulf region last month. The unit of 100 to 150 soldiers keeps trucks rolling, fixes generators and maintains other equipment.

Ruben Estrella Sr. said his son, the oldest of three children, joined the Army after graduating from El Paso’s Mountain View High School seven months ago.

"He had a lot of desire to do something with his life, and he wanted to go into the military so he could get an education," he said. "He wanted to study engineering." Estrella, who runs a body shop, said he didn’t want his son to join the service. "I knew it was a difficult life," he said, "so I didn’t sign his papers. I think my wife did." Estrella said his son was a typical youth. "He played football in high school and wanted to just finish his service and come home," he said. "He just talked about coming back and his plans to go to school." El Paso-area residents are honoring the nine fallen soldiers from Fort Bliss with a memorial Friday. "

 

[Silky]

Private Brandon U. Sloan, 19, Bedford Heights, Ohio

4-9-03


"The high-energy gospel choir at Cleveland’s historic Greater Friendship Baptist Church was no less inspirational Sunday, setting a positive tone, even with the knowledge the son of associate pastor, the Rev. Tandy Sloan, died in Iraq.

"I’m trusting in the Lord. The Lord is still able," the Rev. Sloan told the Akron Beacon Journal before attending the church’s usual Sunday service.

Sloan was listed as missing since March 23, when members of the 507 th Maintenance Company made a wrong turn near Nasiriyah and were ambushed.

The Pentagon changed the status of Sloan and seven other soldiers with the 507th from missing to killed Saturday, April 7.

Their bodies were recovered from the hospital where POW Pvt. Jessica Lynch was held.

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of our son, Brandon," the elder Sloan said in a prepared statement.

"Despite our grief, we too are extremely proud of Brandon’s accomplishments. Brandon was doing something positive that he believed in, and it is our hope that both in life and death, Brandon will serve as an example to others through is undying commitment to serve his country."

Sloan thought the Army could develop his potential, his father said. After enlisting in 2001, he became a supply clerk and was sent to Kuwait with the 507th Maintenance Company, based at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas.

Sloan had a passion for sports, and played defensive lineman on the Bedford High School football team.

"He was known for being a very nice student and if he felt that someone was being treated unfairly, he was willing to speak up," Margaret Bierman, a spokeswoman for the school, told The Gazette.

"He loves comedy, loves to joke, loves the Temptations, loves football and loves to eat," his grandmother Rementa Pippen told Newsweek.

In addition to his father and grandmother, he is survived by his mother, Kimberly Sloan, a sister, Brittney, and his paternal grandmother, Luverta Sloan."

 

[Silky]

Corporal Evan T. James, 20, La Harpe, Ill

3-30-03

He was a quiet, stand-up guy with an air of absolute dependability. He was also a guy with laser focus and a fierce drive to achieve goals.

A fitness buff during high school in tiny La Harpe, Ill., Evan James dreamed of being a fitness trainer.

Soon after graduation, he signed on at the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center in Peoria to pay for his education and drove the 182 miles to Edwardsville to study at Southern Illinois University. He was in his second year there when he received notice in January he would be deployed.

James was one of two Marines who disappeared Tuesday, March 25, under the cold waters of the Saddam Canal.

When word of his death reached Illinois, impromptu memorials burst out.

In La Harpe, a 1,385-population town near the Mississippi River, townspeople lowered flags and draped ribbons around trees and poles.

At his college, students held two candlelight services. At Our Health Club & Spa, where he worked part time, the staff built a memorial of flowers and candles under a flag at half-staff and a sign reading "In loving memory of Evan James." Within hours the memorial was a huge, flowing mound of flowers, poems and notes.

Health club owner Sue Schaeffer said James was "Very responsible, very mature, very respectful."

Clients and employees loved working with him, but he made a special impression on older women. "Women in their 50s and 60s would always say how wonderful he was. They’d say, ‘When he’s working with me, he looks me straight in the eye. Most young men don’t do that.’ "

To James, fitness was a lifestyle. "He flat-out knew what he wanted and went for it," said his college adviser, Brian Butki.

He worked out relentlessly, was the rare combination of triathlete and competitive bodybuilder, and was "very picky about his diet," Schaeffer said.

He also was picky about a spit-and-polish image. "He had his hair cut every Friday afternoon," she said. "Every Friday. Same time."

The school, his hometown and the health club plan memorials in his name

 

[Silky]

Sergeant Bradley Korthaus, 28, Davenport, Iowa

3-31-03

At 10, Bradley Korthaus said he wanted to be a Marine. He joined the Marines when he turned 18. His father, Steve Korthaus, said his oldest son would have been mad if he didn’t get to fight in the war against Iraq.

Korthaus, 28, disappeared Monday, March 24, with another soldier when they were swept away in the Saddam Canal in southeast Iraq. Marine officials came to his parents’ home in Davenport, Iowa, that day to say he was missing. They returned Wednesday with the news Korthaus’ body had been found after he drowned.

He was assigned to Engineering Company C, 6th Engineer Support Battalion, 4 th Force Service Support Group in Peoria, Ill.

"He was a wonderful Marine," his mother, Marilyn Korthaus, told The Gazette on Saturday. "He was ornery, loved life to the fullest and would not have wanted to do anything other than what he was doing."

His girlfriend, Barbi Schneckloth, told the Waterloo/Cedar Falls (Iowa) Courier on Tuesday they planned to marry as soon as he returned from Iraq.

Korthaus, a plumber, served a four-year stint in the Marine Corps after he graduated in 1992 from high school, where he played football, tennis, basketball and soccer and wrestled.

Two weeks after he left active duty, he returned as a reservist.

The Korthaus family is one that has served in the military. Bradley’s father is a Vietnam veteran. His grandfather, Orville, was a prisoner of war in World War II.

"Here I am, 80 years old and not worth much anymore," Orville Korthaus told the East Valley (Ariz.) Tribune on Thursday. "He had his whole life ahead of him. It doesn’t seem fair."

 

[Deb in IA]

Thank you, Silky.

Sergeant Korthaus was the first fatality from Iowa in the current Iraqi conflict.

His death was ruled a "wartime accident".

He was buried with military honors in the National Cemetary at the Rock Island Arsenal, after a funeral procession that consisted of 300 vechicles, with full police escort usually afforded visiting dignitaries and presidents.

 

[Silky]

Specialist Gregory P. Sanders, 19, Hobart, Ind.

3-27-03

"The boy who dressed in Army fatigues at age 2 and whose family knew he would be a career soldier died doing what he loved at age 19.

Army Spc. Gregory P. Sanders of Hobart, Ind., was killed in action Monday, March 24, in Iraq.

"He is our own hero," said Leeanne Knight, Sanders' aunt.

From building model tanks as a child to enlisting in the Army while still a junior in high school, there never was a doubt about what Sanders wanted to do.

Sanders graduated from Hobart High School in May 2001 and finished basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., in August, reporting to Fort Stewart, Ga., and the 3 rd Battalion of the 69 th Armored Regiment where he was an ammunition loader in an M1 Abrams tank.

In a conversation with his mother after the announcement of a deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq, Sanders said he was pumped and ready to go.

Sent to Kuwait on Jan. 23, Sanders was riding atop his tank when he was killed by a sniper.

"I heard the report on TV," Knight said, "and didn't want to think it was my nephew."

Knight, who lives in Atlanta, said the community support in Hobart has been overwhelming. "I don't even know these people, and they've been wonderful."

"We just want people to know how dedicated he was to his country, and he died doing what he loved," Knight said.

Sanders, a high school honor roll student and track athlete, leaves behind his wife, Ruthann; their 14-month-old daughter, Gwendolyn; his mother, Leslie Sanders; a brother, Dean, 16; and two sisters, Clare, 10, and Lauryn, 8."

 

[Silky]

Lance Corporal Michael J. Williams, 31, Phoenix

4-3-03

"Lance Cpl. Michael J. Williams, among a group of 2 nd Expeditionary Brigade troops missing since March 23, was found dead Friday, March 28 near Nasiriyah.

Williams, a 60 mm mortar forward observer, apparently was caught in a sandstorm and lost radio communication, said his fiancee, Heather Strange of Phoenix.

Strange told The Washington Post the two met nearly four years ago but "were in denial" about their feelings for each other until Williams visited at Christmas while on leave from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Williams proposed to Strange in an e-mail from his ship on the way to Kuwait, Strange told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution on Saturday.

Strange said her sister is married to Williams’ brother, Joe, and their mothers, who are friends, set up both sets of siblings.

"It seemed so right, like it should have been happening all along," she said of their decision to marry. "But on Jan. 2, I had to say goodbye. I put him on a plane, and he deployed Jan. 11."

The last letter she received was dated March 8 from Kuwait. She learned he was missing March 26.

"Early Saturday morning I was writing him a letter at 2 a.m.," Strange said. "I didn’t want to stop writing mail. I wanted him to know that even though he was missing, we were still loving him and missing him. And right then, there was a knock at my door."

She knew what it meant.

Thinking he wasn’t doing enough with his life, Williams left the flooring business he and his brother started in Phoenix and enlisted in February 2001, Strange said.

Fellow Marines nicknamed him Omar, short for "Old Man River," because he was 10 years older than most in his unit.

Williams’ father, Bob Pennington of Yuma, Ariz., said reminders of his son are everywhere.

"I was going through some of my son’s things, and I found a big picture of an eagle superimposed over a flag, and it says on it ‘Courage —Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it,’ " Pennington told The Yuma Sun.

His son had that kind of courage, Pennington said. "