Fallen Marine, 21, mourned by hundreds
'$3 million man' beat childhood illness
Saturday, April 29, 2006
By Paul Purpura
West Bank bureau

The pictorial journey through the life of Lance Cpl. Derrick Cothran was projected on a screen hung from the ceiling of a Kenner church, where hundreds of mourners gathered to say good-bye Friday.

There was the first photo of a newborn taken at a hospital. A picture of an infant cradled in his mother Elena's arms as his father, Ted, stood by proudly during the baptism.

One of a playful boy goofing with his brother T.J. and sister Antoinette at their Avondale home. Another as a future husband down on his right knee, proposing to Victoria; then one of their wedding day.

One of Cothran in his Marine combat uniform, standing in a Humvee's turret behind a machine gun.

The journey ended with the words cast across the screen, "We'll see you soon . . .," drawing a chorus of sobs among those gathered at Williams Boulevard Baptist Church.

Nearly two weeks after he was killed in combat in Iraq, Cothran, 21, the son of a former Marine, the brother of a serving Marine and the husband of a woman who was training to be a Marine, was laid to rest Friday with full military honors.

Sitting before his flag-draped casket, Cothran's parents were presented with his Purple Heart medal, awarded posthumously for the combat wounds that led to his death on April 15 in Al Anbar province. A Marine less than a year, Cothran was in Iraq only three weeks when he died, his father said.

Hundreds of people crowded the church, where the lobby featured photographs of two other Marines in the 2nd Tank Battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C., who died with Cothran in the explosion: Cpl. Pablo Mayorga, 33, of Margate, Fla., and Pfc. Ryan Winslow, 19, of Jefferson, Ala.

Inside the church, relatives recounted how Cothran suffered from severe asthma and allergies as a child, but beat the odds and grew up to become an athletic young man, earning the nickname the "$3 million man."

Called "Baby Derrick" by his family, Cothran attended Westbank Cathedral Academy before going to John Curtis Christian School, where he was a star defensive back for the school's perennial championship football team. He attended Union College in Kentucky on a scholarship, then enlisted in the Marine Corps. He hoped to become a federal law enforcement officer one day, Ted Cothran said.

"I will always respect what he did," one of his maternal aunts, Lorna Bourgeois of Destrehan, said of Cothran's joining the Marine Corps. "He was an all-American boy."

Like his father, he had a penchant for motorcycles, and they sometimes rode with military veterans groups, such as the Patriot Guard Riders and the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association.

More than 60 of the riders, from across Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, attended Friday's services, "to show honor and respect" for the family and the fallen Marine, said Mike Long, president of the Combat Veterans group's Louisiana chapter and an Army veteran of the Vietnam War.

The Rev. Miles Victor, associate pastor at New Vision Baptist Church, recounted how in June he performed his first wedding ceremony, when Cothran and Victoria were married.

And the 25-year-old pastor fought tears as he told of how Friday's funeral service also was his first, for his longtime friend whom he described as a man of integrity.

"When Derrick said, 'I do,' he did. When Derrick said 'I will,' he went," Victor said, calling his friend "a symbol of love" who accomplished much in life.

"All of these things would not have occurred had it not been for diligence and the pursuit of perfection in his life," Victor said.

After the funeral, police shut down the eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 and I-610 from Williams Boulevard in Kenner through Canal Boulevard in New Orleans, clearing the route to Metairie Cemetery for a funeral motorcade that stretched nearly three miles.

At the Louisiana Law Enforcement Memorial in the cemetery, a Marine Corps squad's 21-gun salute preceded a Navy seaman's playing of the funerary "Taps."

Marine sergeants folded the American flag that draped Cothran's silver casket and presented it to his parents. A Marine first sergeant presented another one to his wife.

Paul Purpura can be reached at ppurpura@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3791.

Ellie