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thedrifter
10-16-06, 06:49 AM
Bereaved military families mark loss

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | October 16, 2006

WORCESTER -- One by one, the photographs of Massachusetts service personnel who died in Iraq flashed on a large screen yesterday over the stage at crowded Mechanics Hall, pictures of smiling, confident warriors from Fall River to Springfield.

Below, the tenor John McDermott sang ``You'll Never Walk Alone," and 1,500 people, some dabbing their eyes, all respectful in their silence, watched the visual reminder of the price that war has exacted in the lives and limbs of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.

Organized by Korean War veterans from central Massachusetts, the memorial tribute honored 71 service personnel from the state who have been killed in conflicts since the Gulf War , and the families they left behind.

Nearly 500 members of those Gold Star families attended the service in what is believed to have been the largest such gathering in Massachusetts since the Iraq war began.

Two of the Gold Star parents were Brian and Alma Hart of Bedford, whose son, Army Private John Hart, died when insurgents attacked his unarmored Humvee outside Kirkuk, Iraq, in 2003. As the two mingled with other Gold Star parents at a luncheon before the service, the Harts spoke of how meaningful the tribute is to long-grieving families who often feel adr ift and unable to move on.

``To have us together is really important, because folks think they're alone," said Brian Hart.

Joshua Hamre of Enfield, Conn., whose stepbrother, Marine Captain John Maloney of Chicopee, died from a roadside bomb in June 2005, called the occasion a celebration.

``We're here for a lot of good people who are no longer with us," Hamre said.

Looking around the luncheon crowd, Hamre shook his head slightly. ``If this room had one family in it, it would still be too many," he said. ``That it's filled to capacity is overwhelming."

Inside the hall, the memorial mixed patriotic speeches, music, and reflections on those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Senator Edward M. Kennedy said that ``today's heroes . . . serve us faithfully, despite the pervasive dangers they face at every moment, despite the mounting casualties they endure, despite their lengthening deployments far from homes and families and friends."

Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke in soft, measured tones when he told the families, ``There are no words that any of us could possibly choose that would lessen your pain." He said he hopes the tribute will ``remind you that we will never forget."

Pace also helped moderate a live video feed between families in the hall and two service people in Iraq, Lisa Marie Taylor, a Navy hospital corpsman from Oxford, and Army Staff Sergeant John Heenan of Rutland .

Francis R. Carroll of Worcester, 71, a Navy veteran of the Korean War who organized the tribute, said two years of planning went into the nonpolitical event.

``These people are coming with a lot of heaviness in their hearts," Carroll said. The intent ``was to create one day where they say, `Gee, somebody really cares what happened to my husband or my son.' We just want to do our little part."

The service also honored the sacrifices of war correspondents, including Elizabeth Neuffer of the Globe, who died on assignment in Iraq in May 2003, and five other journalists who have been killed in Iraq and Pakistan.

Neuffer's longtime partner, Peter Canellos, the Globe's Washington bureau chief, said the journalists ``represent the very best of our profession." But journalists would not be human, he added, unless they questioned whether the ongoing mission ``was all truly worth it."

``We wish for the day," he said, ``when all such conflicts will end."

In addition, 26 former prisoners of war, dating to World War II, were recognized , including two from the Iraq war who were reunited on stage with the lieutenant who led the rescue mission.

Ellie