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From: Bart (129.171.32.13)
August 16, 2004 BY TOM McNAMEE SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Jack Collins says President Bush was wrong to go to war in Iraq. Some would say that makes him unpatriotic. You tell me. Last Sunday, Jack and his wife, Angel, were visiting relatives in Chicago when their young daughter Lauren called from home in Crystal Lake. "There are people at the door," Lauren told her mother. "Two Marines." Jack and Angel knew what that meant. When you have a son fighting in Iraq, you live in dread that two Marines might one day show up at your door. Jack got on the phone and asked one of the Marines to give it to him straight. But the Marine said softly, "Mr. Collins, we'd like to talk to you in person." "So I knew," Jack told me later. *** I was sitting in the Collins' living room, and I was a little early. I waited while the family talked in the kitchen. They were making funeral arrangements. I heard someone ask, "What about flowers?" On a table by the front door was a small shrine. There was a candle, an American flag and flowers. There were old photos of a happy child. There was a new photo of a fit Marine in his dress uniform, looking almost grown up. This, of course, was Lance Cpl. Jonathan Collins, who should not be dead. He was 19. Jack came out of the kitchen. He grabbed a folding chair and pulled it up close, ready to talk. He and Angel adored this boy, the second of their four children. They could not have been more proud. Jack wanted to tell me all about Jonathan so that I could tell you. *** From about the age of 15, Jonathan was determined to serve in the military, and not just in any branch. He had to be a Marine. His dad's uncle had been a Marine, killed at age 19 in Vietnam. Jonathan wanted the challenge and the honor of serving his country, especially so after Sept. 11. Angel tried to discourage him. She worried about his safety. She warned him, only half-joking, that he was too headstrong. He'd end up peeling more potatoes than any Marine who ever lived. Jack wasn't wild about the idea, either. He and Jonathan talked and talked, and Jack kept bringing up the dangers: You could be shot at, you could be hurt, you could be killed. You might have to kill somebody else. "But Jonathan knew what he was getting into," Jack says. "Kids don't have as many illusions about war today. They've seen 'Private Ryan' and 'BlackHawk Down.' On the TV news, they've seen real Marines who are dead." Last year, on a Saturday in spring, Jonathan graduated from Crystal Lake South High School. He shipped off to boot camp the next day. Jonathan found that he loved the Marines -- the whole life. Back in high school, he could get a little silly, hitting plastic golf balls in the halls and hopping to classes on a toy horse. But in the Marines, he was all business. Once, during a competition between platoons, he lost a shoe while running a three-mile race. But he kept right on running and his platoon won. Now that, his superiors told him, was the true spirit of a Marine. *** Jonathan was deployed to Kuwait in February of this year, and to the Al Anbar province of Iraq a month later. He went out on patrols, pulled guard duty and helped rebuild a school. He wrote home by e-mail once or twice a week and called home every couple of weeks. Almost always he would say: "I'm fine. Everything is great. Don't worry about me." But to his father, when his mother wasn't on the line, Jonathan sometimes admitted to a darker reality. It bothered him that the Americans were working so hard to rebuild Iraq and yet a day never went by that somebody didn't shoot at them or throw rocks or spit. A fellow Marine, one of Jonathan's best friends, drowned in the Euphrates River during a night operation. "Jonathan was very down after that," his father says. "Kids that age, you still have that certain braveness, that idea that nothing's going to happen to me." On another day, an Iraqi man lunged at Jonathan from behind and tried to stab him. Fortunately, Jonathan was protected by his Kevlar vest. He turned and, acting on instinct, shot and killed the man. "Dad," he told his father on the phone later, "he was only two or three feet away." "Jonathan," his father said, "you were defending yourself. You did what you had to do." But Jack will never forget how his son sounded that day: "It was like the soul was gone from his voice." Last Sunday, Jonathan was on patrol on a rooftop. Another Marine asked him to pass him a bottle of water. When Jonathan turned, a sniper's bullet ripped into his head behind his right ear. Jonathan was the 928th U.S. service member killed in Iraq. *** Jonathan died in defense of a lovely ideal: This world can be a better place, and the United States, with all its wealth and strength, can lead the way. Angel said she feels sure that her son showed the hardened Iraqi people how good Americans can be. "This should be what it's all about," she said, holding up a photo of a group of Iraqi children and her son laughing together. "He touched these children for just a moment in time, and maybe they will not listen to what the older people say about Americans. If nothing else comes out of this war, I will pray that he touched these children." But as much as Jack and Angel stood by their son and every other American soldier in Iraq, working with other families to send food and gifts, they have never believed in this war. "We believe we can separate the politics from what's going on there, from what our soldiers are being asked to do," Jack said. "I agreed with why we went to Afghanistan. I think we needed to. But we misread what was going to happen in Iraq." But what do you say, I asked Jack, to those who think we must rally around the president? "The last time I looked, our right as United States citizens is to question our leaders," Jack said. "That is what my son died for us to do. We shouldn't just blindly follow along." A wake for Lance Cpl. Jonathan W. Collins USMC will be held today from 3 to 9 p.m. at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church, 1023 McHenry Ave. in Crystal Lake. A funeral mass will be offered at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday. You might want to go and show your respect for a patriot. And for his brave son who died.
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