Legion hall to unveil portrait
Written by Sarah Ostman / Sun Post Monday, 10 September 2007

“I, Charles O. Palmer II, reinlist (sic) in the Marines because it is home,” he wrote last year. “I have attempted, unable at this point to find a job equal to the Marines, one that enables me to feel a sense of accomplishment that I felt on a daily basis while serving.”

— Charles O. Palmer

A photograph of the first — and hopefully only — Manteca casualty of the Iraq war will take its place in the foyer of the McFall-Grisham Hall this week.

The portrait will be unveiled at a ceremony Tuesday, Sept. 11, with U.S. Marine Cpl. Charles O. Palmer II’s family and members of the American Legion Post 249.

Displayed in the lobby of the hall at 220 E. Yosemite Ave. are photographs of the first Manteca casualty of each war since World War I: Hope McFall, the first Manteca casualty in World War I, Ken Grisham in World War II, Gordon

Thompson in the Korean War and Brock Elliott in Vietnam.
Palmer, 36, was killed May 5 when a roadside bomb struck his Humvee in Iraq’s Anbar province.

A 1989 graduate of Manteca High School, he joined the Marines in 1992 before leaving four years later to start a family in Camp Lejeune, N.C. He reenlisted in 2006, loved ones have recalled, because of a deep sense of commitment to his country.

“I, Charles O. Palmer II, reinlist (sic) in the Marines because it is home,” he wrote last year. “I have attempted, unable at this point to find a job equal to the Marines, one that enables me to feel a sense of accomplishment that I felt on a daily basis while serving.”

Ellie