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thedrifter
11-02-07, 08:15 AM
Posted on Fri, Nov. 02, 2007
A fitting way to offer a year-round memorial
The State, SC

THE WHITE KNOLL High School community has great cause to celebrate tonight when the Timberwolves take on Lexington in the annual rivalry football game. A last-minute, $85,000 donation means White Knoll will toast the naming of its new field house. In so doing, White Knoll will begin what it believes will be a never-ending celebration of Josh Torrence's life.

Torrence was killed when the assault vehicle the 20-year-old Marine was traveling in hit a land mine in Iraq. Torrence was killed March 14, 2005. The dedication of the field house in his name represents a year-long attempt to properly honor the former White Knoll football player.

"It will serve as a good memory, a memory of his achievements," says Vernon Torrence, Josh's father. "He was so proud of being able to make varsity football. He was always in the weight room working out. That was very important to him."

One day during his White Knoll playing days, his father asked "Buddy" why he was so dedicated to weight lifting, and in turn to football.

"Dad, if you want to compete and if you want to be any good, you have to keep it up year-round," Vernon Torrence recalls his late son telling him.

To name a building after an individual in Lexington 1, one-fourth of the cost of the building has to be met by those proposing the name. By Wednesday of this week, it appeared that White Knoll would fall more than halfway short of its $150,000 goal.

Then "a gift from God" fell in White Knoll's lap, according to football coach Mark Cagle. An anonymous donor pledged the remaining $85,000 so the dedication ceremony could go on as planned at tonight's Veterans Bowl game.

Vernon and his wife, Regina, along with daughters Vanessa and Raquel will be there. But they hardly need a field house to remind them of their son and brother. Vernon says the slightest thing can spin his memory to a time he spent with his son.

He vividly recalls when Josh was about 12 and playing with toy soldiers in the backyard of their home in the Wrenwood subdivision off Old Barnwell Road in Lexington County. Dad was watching out the kitchen window when he noticed the backyard grass was burning.

As young Josh scrambled to beat the ice off a frozen water hose and filled a couple of five-gallon buckets with water, Dad never left the kitchen. Before long, Josh's reenactment of a toy Civil War scene — complete with fireworks — was extinguished along with the fire.

Perhaps the best times father and son spent together were in Civil War reenactments, including one that took the two to Pennsylvania for the 135th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1998. Too young to handle a gun, Josh worked on one of the battle reenactment's cannon crews.

Josh was fascinated by army movements, and could recite for anyone the hour-by-hour movements of a battle such as Gettysburg. That interest in war strategies probably triggered his eventual interest in joining the military.

But there was a greater interest for Josh at White Knoll — football, where he was a starting offensive tackle for three seasons. Besides being a fixture in the weight room, Josh was known to teammates and coaches for his bizarre attachment to undershirts. He refused to wash them during the season, according to Cagle, and the stench startled all who dared walk near his locker.

There was one other characteristic about Josh that stood out. He hated to stand on the sideline when White Knoll did not have the ball. He wanted to be on the field at all times, involved in the action. So, he constantly screamed at the White Knoll defense to "get us the ball back, so we can score."

Through extensive weight room work , Josh eventually bulked up to 290 pounds. He was a rock in the White Knoll line, and his aspirations were to play small college football. He attempted to sell himself to Newberry and Georgia Southern on visits to those schools, but no interest was reciprocated.

Vernon, and his wife, Regina admittedly could not afford to send their only son to college. So, he explored his next biggest interest other than football ... the military.

He wanted to join the Marines. The Marines did not want him. A 6-foot-2 Marine needed to weigh 217 pounds, not 290. From May 2003, when Josh graduated from White Knoll, until he signed to join the Marines six months later, he shed the necessary weight. A closely monitored diet plus matching five-mile runs in the morning and evening did the trick.

He returned from boot camp at Parris Island and marched directly to coach Cagle's office at White Knoll.

"Come in," Cagle recalls shouting as heard a couple of knocks on his door. The young man entered the room and stood at attention wearing his Marine dress blues.

"Guess who, coach?" Cagle recalls Josh saying. Cagle tears up every time he tells the story. In his mind's eye, Cagle can still see Josh standing in that doorway. Never has Cagle seen a young man so proud to be wearing a uniform.

It was the last time he saw Josh. That was April of 2004. Five months later, he volunteered for assignment in Fallujah, Iraq, because a company there was shorthanded. His duties included scanning for mines.

On March 14, 2005, near the end of a shift and while heading to their base outside Fallujah, the armored truck carrying Josh and two others triggered a mine. The other two Marines survived.

Sixteen hours later, two Marines knocked on the door of the Torrence's Lexington County home. They informed Vernon Torrence that his only son, the one who he called "Little Buddy" as a youngster and "Buddy" as a young man, was dead.

"He was a wonderful kid, and in the end he proved himself to be a wonderful man," Vernon Torrence says. "Some of the decisions he made that led him down the path that he went, he really, proved he truly was a man. I truly believe he was following the footsteps that he thought was best for himself."

Life has gone on for the Torrences. Both daughters have graduated from White Knoll High. Vernon's only concession is that he no longer participates in Civil War reenactments. He says it is simply too painful to re-live the most treasured times he spent with his son.

Perhaps the White Knoll field house named in his son's honor will help ease the pain even more. More importantly, the building will keep alive the memory of his son for as long as it stands.

Listen to commentaries by Ron Morris weekdays at 8:05 a.m., 2:05 p.m. and 5:58 p.m. on Sports Radio 1400 The Team.

Ellie