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thedrifter
01-11-06, 06:05 AM
Bridge to honor a fallen Marine
Mother says he didn't want to be forgotten
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff | January 11, 2006

He died a few weeks after turning 21, just after care packages jammed with DVDs and cigarettes and the crayon-scrawled birthday cards of an entire first-grade class from Taunton had found their way to him halfway around the world in Iraq. John Van Gyzen IV had been traveling with a truckload of fellow Marines July 5, 2004, when they were hit by a rocket that killed three.

Now the state is naming a bridge in Dighton after Van Gyzen, who left behind a wife pregnant with their first child. It is what governments and officials do to honor the war dead, and nearly three years into the war, the memorials for the dead are mounting.

In Dighton, where Van Gyzen lived with his father and stepmother, a bench at the Memorial Commons was already named for the Marine. Soon, Van Gyzen will also have a two-lane bridge on Somerset Avenue in town honoring him. Senator Marc R. Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat whose district includes Dighton, sponsored the bill to dedicate the bridge.

''I know John would be honored to have something like this, because he didn't want to be forgotten," said his mother, Dorothy Arsenault of West Warwick, R.I. In letters from Anbar province in western Iraq, where he died, Van Gyzen told his mother that if he did not return, he wanted his family to remember that he had chosen to go to Iraq. He didn't want them to cry, he wrote, but he didn't want them to forget him, either.

Van Gyzen was a high school student trying to decide what he wanted from life when he found his answer in a conversation with a Marine recruiter. He signed up with the Marines in 2001 when he was still 17, still too young for boot camp.

''He wanted to see the world," said his stepmother, Jane Van Gyzen. He dreamed, she said, of traveling to Hawaii.

The World Trade Center towers were still standing. There was no war in Iraq. But the world changed quickly, and in early 2003, in his first tour of duty, Van Gyzen was sent to Kuwait, then to Iraq.

''He was excited to go on the first tour, being a young guy," said his stepsister, Janie Collins, who lives in Florida. He gravitated toward the Iraqi children, and at his request his family sent packages of Matchbox cars, candy, and balls, which he distributed to children in the war zone.

Van Gyzen returned from that trip but his Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment was shipped back to Iraq in February 2004. This time he was less eager. ''He didn't think he was coming home," said his father, John Van Gyzen III. The second trip was more difficult; the children this time were taunting instead of friendly. Collins saw changes in her stepbrother's face in pictures he sent home.

''It seemed like that last tour in Iraq, he looked like a man," she said.

He got to see the world, but he never saw Hawaii.

The bridge that will be dedicated in Van Gyzen's honor crosses the Segregansett River, which he often fished or canoed with his father. A date for the ceremony has not yet been set, but a bill naming the bridge in his honor was signed by Governor Mitt Romney earlier this month.

''They went out fishing a lot, but they rarely caught anything," said Jane Van Gyzen. ''They used to explain it to me that it's the pleasure of fishing."

When Van Gyzen was young, his sisters and stepsisters had begun calling him Buddy, after the name of his favorite toy. The name stuck, and his young niece, Kennedy, dubbed him ''Uncle Buddy." When her first-grade class in Dighton sent Van Gyzen birthday cards in 2004, each one was addressed to Uncle Buddy.

When Van Gyzen was in Iraq, his father bought a Somerset gas station for the two men to run upon his return. The sale was finalized days after the young Marine died, Collins said.

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.

Ellie