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thedrifter
01-22-08, 07:48 PM
Rock-solid relationship
Soldier gives his family something to remember him by as he serves in Iraq
BY BRENDAN O’BRIEN
Journal Times
Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:33 PM CST

OAK CREEK — Love sure is like a rock.

Michelle Rogers, whose husband, Aaron, just left for Iraq, will be reminded of this fact each time she looks at a 42-pound heart-shaped sandstone given to the couple at their wedding Dec. 28.

Aaron, who was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., found the rock while training near the base.

“I don’t know how he found it,” said Rogers, 23, who works at Wheaton Fransican Health Care in Racine as a release of information specialist. “He wrote a ‘A plus M’ on it. The guys took a couple of pictures of it.”

Rogers, a corporal in the Marine Corps, is on his second tour in Iraq, will be stationed near Fallujah. The couple met two years ago while working at the Old Navy in Milwaukee.

He took the rock back to the barricades and kept it for a few weeks.

“They were going to move ... so he told one of the guys to go toss it, get rid of it because he didn’t want to carry it,” Michelle said. “Instead of the guys throwing it out somewhere, they didn’t tell him, they kept it.”

To the surprise of the bride and groom, one his fellow Marines presented the rock at their wedding after a dozen of his comrades signed the back of it.

“Aaron never knew that they had it,” Michelle said of the rock that measures a foot wide, a foot tall and 5 inches thick. “I was real happy.”

Michelle said she has not found a perfect place to display the rock in their home but can envision it being around for the next 50 to 60 years.

“It’s very tough, but I have to understand what he is doing and that a lot of people have to go through it and I am not the only one,” she said of her emotions. “I can’t wait until he gets back.”

Ellie