Marine Ryan Beaupre
In the tiny town
of St. Anne, Ill., it seemed that all 1,300 residents flocked to
a Friday memorial Mass for Capt. Ryan Beaupre, remembered for
his unruly red hair and easy smile, and for the generous way he
surrendered his turn on the phone lines in Kuwait to others who
had wives and children. They needed the contact more, he
reasoned, and so he wrote letters home instead.
That is the way
the 30-year-old Beaupre is being eulogized: the kind of guy who
always did the right thing, in the nicest possible way.
Residents lowered
flags in his honor and reminisced about him at the local coffee
shop. And they talked of how it brought the war home.
"I can't believe
that out of 300,000 people over there, it would be someone
local," said Jim Sprimont, a neighbor. Beaupre was one of
four children of Mark and Nicky Beaupre. He was a graduate of
Bishop McNamara High School and Illinois Wesleyan University,
and he had been in the Marine Corps since 1995
The same was
being said of other local heroes in other hometowns around the
country.
Maj. Jay Thomas
Aubin of Waterville, Maine. Cpl. Brian Matthew Kennedy of
Houston. Staff Sgt. Kendall Damon Waters-Bey of Baltimore. They
died with Beaupre and eight British Marines as their helicopter
crashed, apparently due to an accident.
The crash
occurred as allied Army and Marine units surged across the
Kuwaiti border into southern Iraq on Thursday and Friday,
working at first to secure the region's oil wells.
Their deaths were
followed, hours later, by the news that two more Marines,
members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, had been lost in
ground combat: 2nd Lt. Therrel S. Childers of Mississippi and
Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez of Los Angeles.
