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thedrifter
12-18-05, 08:43 AM
Local Marine answers call
By Andrew Dys The Herald
(Published December 18‚ 2005)

Jason Hancock's father has leukemia. Bob Hancock, at 62, said he is supposed to be dead.

"Still kickin'," Bob Hancock said.

Ann Hancock, Jason's mother, has multiple sclerosis.

"Some days are tough," she said.

Bob Hancock asked his only son not to join the Marines after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But Jason Hancock, now 22, still joined the Marine Reserves.

Rush to get married

Bob knew it was only a matter of time until his son went to war.

"I was in the Army from 1968 to 1970," said Bob Hancock. "I was drafted. ... I had friends that left and didn't come back. I saw the bodies come back. I was young just like him."

When it became clear earlier this year that Hancock's Reserve unit from North Carolina would be going to Iraq, he rushed to marry his sweetheart. Rachel Hancock is now a 20-year-old bride going to school at Winthrop University while her husband tries to live through every day in Iraq where his peers get bombed.

Rachel studies business and hopes the phone doesn't ring in the middle of the night.

"We figured we better get married at the last minute because the future just wasn't certain," Rachel Hancock said. "I didn't plan on the first few months of being married to be like this, but this is what happened."

Hancock's civil affairs unit is tasked with rebuilding schools and power plants and other utilities. He has sent home photos of himself surrounded by Iraqi children next to those new school walls.

Polls show support for the war is at its lowest point yet. Not in the Hancock house.

"That's the part of this war that people don't seem to understand, what young men like my son are doing for those people," Ann Hancock said. "All people here seem to get from the media is the killing."

Before deployment, Hancock worked for Comporium Communications and hustled a second job to make a few bucks with a catering business. He drilled on the weekends with his Reserve unit. Jason Hancock's story isn't much different from so many others in the military, his father concedes. A blue-collar young man who joined the service for love of country and a few extra dollars, then heads to war leaving a new wife and disabled parents on a fixed income behind.

But in wartime, especially as the holidays approach, the worry increases.

At the Hancock's Rock Hill home, a Christmas Tree is surrounded by presents. On Christmas Day, those presents will remain unopened.

"My son is over there to protect me and everybody else in this country," Bob Hancock said. "But I know that every day could be his last. One time, he was driving a Humvee and a bomb blew up in front. The front of the Humvee was gone. He could have been gone.

"We'll open the presents in April, when my son comes home."

Andrew Dys •329-4065

adys@heraldonline.com

Ellie