The Ross Report : A Marine gone, but not forgotten

Marine Maj. Megan McClung died a little more than a year ago, but her legacy lives on.

McClung was a public affairs officer for the Marines in Fallujah. She died in December of 2006 after taking a news crew into Ramadi. Army specialist Vincent Pomante and Capt. Travis Patriquin were in the Humvee with her, and all died instantly.

She touched a lot of people. Reporters and photographers remembered her, and mourned her. I was one of them.

Megan's father, Mike, wrote recently to tell me how he and his wife, Re, had been amazed by the outpouring of emotion they experienced at her funeral and interment. And Mike is a former Marine himself.

I thought I would write a blog item to talk about Megan's legacy and all, but I think her father described it better than I could. Here is his e-mail, only slightly edited:



Megan was a complex young lady with many components to her personality. You were probably most aware of her military and, perhaps, her athletic sides. Beyond those areas, she had a strong academic orientation, a giving component and an interpersonal piece and a "presence" that made her unique in my estimation.

What we were not prepared for is the continuing stream of letters and events that have followed us for this year. Let me list some of them:

My son had his first child and our first grandchild on April 19th and he gave her Megan's middle name, Malia. That was not all that unusual. Her best friend, Debbie, found out she was pregnant just after Megan's funeral and has named her daughter after Megan, Malia Sue.

That wasn't too surprising either. At a local fund raiser/10K run, a man and his wife approached us to tell us that their daughter (also a US Naval Academy graduate) had decided to name their first child Megan. Then we were approached by two of Megan's classmates at this year's Marine Corps Marathon who indicated that they had named their daughters Megan.

I am sure I would have enjoyed the discussion with their wives (who we understand had never met Meg) about naming their daughters after a girl they once knew. I can understand family and close friends, but the extent of people naming their child after Megan was somewhat surprising. Or not, I wonder how many children are named after Madonna?


We were contacted by Boston College, the Metropolitan School, where Meg had just finished her Masters in Criminal Justice in November. They wanted to award her their Academic Excellence award and create a scholarship in her name. No one there had actually met Megan; their love for her had come entirely via her interactions with them in the electronic class they ran through chat rooms.

The Dean told me at her graduation ceremony that he used Megan as an example for students who complained their work load was too hard. He said he never had a repeat complaint. Besides that scholarship, there is one at the USNA Foundation and there is one started in the Women Marines Association.

The USNA Class of 95 recently had a "Run to Honor" which was held for the six members of the class that have lost their lives in combat or training accidents. The two young men that thought up the idea told me the initial thought was to run in Megan's honor, but they realized she would have wanted all the lost classmates honored as well. As a result, they had over 130 folks run the Marathon and another 40 to 50 do the 10K held at the same time.

The night before we had 300-plus for a sit-down dinner to remember the six fallen. We heard from Fallujah that they ran the Marine Corps Marathon Forward again this year, and did it in honor of Megan. Meg had asked for a penguin and between us we created the "Paul the Penguin" award for the last finisher. John "the Penguin" Bingham writes for Runners World and he joined us in presenting that award in DC this year, which the MCM Staff has made into an annual memory of Megan and her zest for life and athletics.

A man in Italy was so taken by her story he contacted us and asked for permission to run a half-marathon in her honor, and he did with a shirt bearing her photo and story. He was on the road to recovery from an accident when her story came on the news.

Meg had a wonderful presence and focus on the individual she was dealing with. You probably saw that in your dealings with her. What we have found so impressive is the number of folks from all aspects of the media and the Marine Corps or Army who have gone out of their way to tell us of how Megan made them the center of the universe for those few minutes they had with her.

We spoke with a young lance corporal at the Wounded Warriors Battalion who literally bounced as he related how he adored Megan. A lieutenant in D.C., who admitted (finally) in our conversation that he didn't always agree with Megan, spent the better part of three hours telling us stories about how they worked together and crying all through the telling.

Another man drove across country from Virginia in the hopes of meeting us and left his gifts on the doorstep in our absence (we were in Hawaii). We finally did meet him and he told us his story at the Marine Corps Marathon.

Much of our efforts this year have been directed in fund raising activities toward the "Marines Helping Marines" through the Marine Corps League. Meg worked for the MCL and the Marines4Life programs for six months or so before she went to Iraq with KBR. During her time there she indicated that we had no real understanding or appreciation for how badly wounded our young men and women were and how much help they needed when they got home. We took her desires and, instead of having flowers sent, have directed all such gestures be converted instead to donations for the MHM program.

Meg was always a giving child and we learned early on that she would give to anyone who wanted something she had or (Meg felt) needed something she had that thing, regardless of the value or source of the item. So, some of our Christmas gifts we had spent hours searching for went to others we never knew. We have carried that on.

This was fun/interesting and hard to write, but I do feel much better for having written this.

-- Mike

In addition to all that, a new broadcast facility at Camp Victory, the sprawling base outside the Baghdad Airport, was named in memory of his daughter. -- John Koopman

Ellie