thedrifter
02-04-09, 06:38 AM
February 4, 2009
About New York
Parents of Deceased Marine Are Left With a Puzzle of Forgiveness
By JIM DWYER
Guitar in hand, audience in place, song in mind, Bill Brennan drew a deep breath. He was ready to sing. In the front row sat his family, all but one son, Julian Brennan, who grinned from a display of photographs.
It was Monday night at the Picnic House in Prospect Park. More than 200 people had gathered to remember the absent Brennan son and in him, the mysterious, dazzling contradictions of life: the Julian Brennan who attended the Baltimore Meeting of Quakers in high school and the rising young actor who sang at open-mic nights in Park Slope bars; the skateboarding party boy adrift on the Lower East Side and the triathlete who swam the Hudson, then raced through the streets on foot and bike; husband and brother and son.
And also: Lance Cpl. Julian Brennan, son of an anti-war family, 25-year-old Marine killed by a bomb in Afghanistan on Jan. 24.
“Oh me, oh my, where do I start?” his father sang. “The moon is huge, it’s yellow and it breaks your heart.”
He sang about forgiveness and how the drive for revenge can twist the soul. Mr. Brennan, 55, explained later that he wrote the song more than a year ago in reflecting on the death of Daniel Pearl, the reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was murdered in Pakistan in 2002.
“Now I’ve lost a loved one,” he said. “It’s the whole conundrum of forgiveness. How do we break out of this and survive as a people?”
The American war in Afghanistan is entering its eighth year, its human costs and gains often hidden behind the clouds of horrors that rose from Iraq. The day after Lance Corporal Brennan’s death, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said that the public should be prepared for an “uptick” in American deaths in Afghanistan.
The Brennan household had, in general, been opposed to the Iraq invasion, divided about Afghanistan, and unhappy with the Bush administration. They did not expect to send a child to either war, said Thya Merz, Julian’s mother, and they grappled with his decision to join the Marines in 2007.
“You follow your heart as far as you can, but where it brings you doesn’t always make rational sense,” said Ms. Merz, 55.
In 2003, the family moved from Takoma Park, Md., to Brooklyn. Ms. Merz was taking a job as head of the Corlears School in Manhattan. Julian was entering the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Like his father, a singer and children’s entertainer, he could make people pay attention and laugh.
The acting life, even for people of great talent and drive, is unforgiving. Julian found work as a carpenter with Martha Stewart’s television show, in a few commercials and some Off Broadway work, Mr. Brennan said.
“There was a dark time in Julian’s life, a lot of drinking and nights out, and it felt ultimately hollow to him.”
In 2005, Mr. Brennan’s father — Julian’s grandfather — James C. Brennan, died. In the battle for Iwo Jima, he had earned the Navy Cross, a recognition of valor second only to the Medal of Honor; of his company of 330 men, 28 survived. At his funeral, the grandson kissed the coffin. Over the next two years, he embraced the discipline of endurance sport and felt a call.
One day in 2007, he told his parents that he had some news: He had signed up with a Marine recruiter in Brooklyn. For a week or so, the parents urged him to reconsider, to think about the Peace Corps or other service work. Julian reminded them that they had brought their kids — another son, James, and a daughter, Shannon — to political demonstrations on the Washington mall and to the polls on Election Day.
“He said, ‘You always raised us to understand that we were privileged, and have a duty to be active engaged citizens of the world. I feel called to do this,’ ” Ms. Merz recalled her son saying. “I said, ‘This is not what I meant.’
“It was a choice I couldn’t understand, and he knew that,” Ms. Merz said. “I told him, ‘I can honor your service. But I have a very hard time wrapping my head around thinking my son is being trained to kill people.’ ”
Mr. Brennan said that his son was listening to his own “inner voice, and following that. In his heart of hearts, Julian wasn’t a pacifist.”
He wrote vivid e-mail messages home to friends and family. He called at Christmas and then on Jan. 20, unaware that a new president was being inaugurated. “He said, ‘I have no regrets about my choice,’ ” Ms. Merz said. “That’s one of the things that has made these last days bearable. If he’d had regrets, it would be almost impossible to live with.”
Before his company was deployed in November, Julian was given a 96-hour leave. He flew home and walked with his parents through Prospect Park, the autumn leaves crunching below their feet. He told them that he had arranged that the woman he loved, Bettina Beard, would receive his death benefits. Although they did not realize precisely what those arrangements involved, Mr. Brennan said, “We should’ve known then that he was married. We only knew they were making plans for a future.”
They put him into a cab, watching from the front of their home as he headed for the airport. “It’s tough sitting at the table with the rest of the family, knowing that Jules won’t be there again,” Mr. Brennan said. “We’re all going to age, and he won’t.”
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
Ellie
About New York
Parents of Deceased Marine Are Left With a Puzzle of Forgiveness
By JIM DWYER
Guitar in hand, audience in place, song in mind, Bill Brennan drew a deep breath. He was ready to sing. In the front row sat his family, all but one son, Julian Brennan, who grinned from a display of photographs.
It was Monday night at the Picnic House in Prospect Park. More than 200 people had gathered to remember the absent Brennan son and in him, the mysterious, dazzling contradictions of life: the Julian Brennan who attended the Baltimore Meeting of Quakers in high school and the rising young actor who sang at open-mic nights in Park Slope bars; the skateboarding party boy adrift on the Lower East Side and the triathlete who swam the Hudson, then raced through the streets on foot and bike; husband and brother and son.
And also: Lance Cpl. Julian Brennan, son of an anti-war family, 25-year-old Marine killed by a bomb in Afghanistan on Jan. 24.
“Oh me, oh my, where do I start?” his father sang. “The moon is huge, it’s yellow and it breaks your heart.”
He sang about forgiveness and how the drive for revenge can twist the soul. Mr. Brennan, 55, explained later that he wrote the song more than a year ago in reflecting on the death of Daniel Pearl, the reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was murdered in Pakistan in 2002.
“Now I’ve lost a loved one,” he said. “It’s the whole conundrum of forgiveness. How do we break out of this and survive as a people?”
The American war in Afghanistan is entering its eighth year, its human costs and gains often hidden behind the clouds of horrors that rose from Iraq. The day after Lance Corporal Brennan’s death, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said that the public should be prepared for an “uptick” in American deaths in Afghanistan.
The Brennan household had, in general, been opposed to the Iraq invasion, divided about Afghanistan, and unhappy with the Bush administration. They did not expect to send a child to either war, said Thya Merz, Julian’s mother, and they grappled with his decision to join the Marines in 2007.
“You follow your heart as far as you can, but where it brings you doesn’t always make rational sense,” said Ms. Merz, 55.
In 2003, the family moved from Takoma Park, Md., to Brooklyn. Ms. Merz was taking a job as head of the Corlears School in Manhattan. Julian was entering the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Like his father, a singer and children’s entertainer, he could make people pay attention and laugh.
The acting life, even for people of great talent and drive, is unforgiving. Julian found work as a carpenter with Martha Stewart’s television show, in a few commercials and some Off Broadway work, Mr. Brennan said.
“There was a dark time in Julian’s life, a lot of drinking and nights out, and it felt ultimately hollow to him.”
In 2005, Mr. Brennan’s father — Julian’s grandfather — James C. Brennan, died. In the battle for Iwo Jima, he had earned the Navy Cross, a recognition of valor second only to the Medal of Honor; of his company of 330 men, 28 survived. At his funeral, the grandson kissed the coffin. Over the next two years, he embraced the discipline of endurance sport and felt a call.
One day in 2007, he told his parents that he had some news: He had signed up with a Marine recruiter in Brooklyn. For a week or so, the parents urged him to reconsider, to think about the Peace Corps or other service work. Julian reminded them that they had brought their kids — another son, James, and a daughter, Shannon — to political demonstrations on the Washington mall and to the polls on Election Day.
“He said, ‘You always raised us to understand that we were privileged, and have a duty to be active engaged citizens of the world. I feel called to do this,’ ” Ms. Merz recalled her son saying. “I said, ‘This is not what I meant.’
“It was a choice I couldn’t understand, and he knew that,” Ms. Merz said. “I told him, ‘I can honor your service. But I have a very hard time wrapping my head around thinking my son is being trained to kill people.’ ”
Mr. Brennan said that his son was listening to his own “inner voice, and following that. In his heart of hearts, Julian wasn’t a pacifist.”
He wrote vivid e-mail messages home to friends and family. He called at Christmas and then on Jan. 20, unaware that a new president was being inaugurated. “He said, ‘I have no regrets about my choice,’ ” Ms. Merz said. “That’s one of the things that has made these last days bearable. If he’d had regrets, it would be almost impossible to live with.”
Before his company was deployed in November, Julian was given a 96-hour leave. He flew home and walked with his parents through Prospect Park, the autumn leaves crunching below their feet. He told them that he had arranged that the woman he loved, Bettina Beard, would receive his death benefits. Although they did not realize precisely what those arrangements involved, Mr. Brennan said, “We should’ve known then that he was married. We only knew they were making plans for a future.”
They put him into a cab, watching from the front of their home as he headed for the airport. “It’s tough sitting at the table with the rest of the family, knowing that Jules won’t be there again,” Mr. Brennan said. “We’re all going to age, and he won’t.”
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
Ellie