Marine leads charge to honor reservists
Golf outing to raise funds for memorial

BY CHRISTINA HALL • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • April 20, 2008

Brian Vella considers the 22 young men of the 1/24th Marine Reserves killed in Iraq as his brothers.


He flew to the Middle East with some of them. He talked hunting with one, received military weapons from another and simply hung out with a third.

Now, Vella wants to preserve their memories and honor them as though they were his own blood relatives.

He's hoping the first major fund-raiser next month for a proposed memorial for the fallen Marines will raise $25,000 -- a quarter of the marker's estimated $100,000 cost.

"They definitely deserve to have a memorial in their honor as soon as they can," said the 21-year-old Petersburg resident and lance corporal. "They were amazing guys -- I knew firsthand -- that lost their lives."

A May 30 golf outing in Ann Arbor is to garner funds for the proposed memorial -- a bronze mess table with flanking benches and plates engraved with the Marines' names on the table -- to be placed at the group's home quarters at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township.

Flowing water and a small pool would be incorporated into the memorial, and a flagpole and metal rendering of a helmet, rifle, dog tags and boots would be on-site.

The Marines and their families were chronicled by the Free Press during their 2006-07 deployment as Michigan's Band of Brothers.

Vella's parents, Rick and Mary Jo Vella, have raised about $10,000 for a separate memorial at their son's Weapons Company in Perrysburg Township, Ohio. That company and the others in the 1/24th -- Alpha in Grand Rapids, Bravo in Saginaw, Charlie in Lansing and Headquarters and Support at Selfridge -- also are considering memorials where they are based.

None of the companies was spared. Each lost Marines.

Lt. Col. Mindy Herrmann, a reservist who is Michigan's coordinator for Marine for Life, which helps Marines transition into the civilian workforce, said the memorial project is "near and dear to all of our hearts."

"We lost 22 Marines, and we've gotten back and people move on with their lives. But for those who knew these Marines, there's not a day, I don't think, that passes that they don't think about them," she said. "We all think about these Marines every day."

Mary Jo Vella agreed.

"When they got wounded, you got wounded," she said. "When they died, a part of you died, too."

Sgt. Jeffrey Martin, assistant public affairs officer for the 1/24th, said some donations for the memorial have come in, but he did not have a dollar amount.

"We're trying to do everything we can to represent the Marines who gave the ultimate sacrifice," he said. "Anything in their honor will be really great."

Brian Vella, who returned with the battalion a year ago this month, is to visit the proposed marker to remember those who did not come home alive.

"For people to volunteer to go and give their life for their country," he said, choking up, unable to talk about the experience, "so many don't appreciate it."

Contact CHRISTINA HALL at 586-826-7265 or chall@freepress.com.

Ellie