Promise of the Brave
Family and friends reveal the character of a fallen Marine who received the Medal of Honor.
Story by Staff Sgt. Scott Dunn, HEADQUARTERS MARINE CORPS, Washington
Out of bed in the wee morning hours, Dan Dunham
went to the sliding-glass door.
On the back porch stood Jason, translucent and grinning.
Dan guessed it was a dream, but a suspension of disbelief allowed him to accept his son’s report from the afterlife.
Jason didn’t talk. He just smiled his Jay smile.
In a way, the smile said, “You did the right thing, Dad.”
Dan smiled back. A weight he had carried since ordering Jason off life support would now become easier to bear.
Dan slid the door shut and went back to bed.
Days later, Dan told his wife all about the dream. Deb, upset over not seeing Jason in her own dreams, asked Dan, “Why didn’t you let him inside the house?”
“Because that wouldn’t have put it to an end for me,” he said.
Dan had found his own peace. He assured Deb that she would find hers.
Beyond a small, sleepy, Western New York town, in a smaller, even sleepier town, a mother sits in a rural, double-wide mobile home at a small desk, mouseclicks at her smallish computer and searches a slide show for her biggest hero.
Helicopters on a desert apron. Click.
Marines on a sand-bag detail. Click.
A half-grinning lieutenant stirring a half-drum of flaming field feces.
Keep clicking.
In the grainy, digital images, Cpl. Jason L. Dunham’s face blends into an overexposed Iraq desert and jumbles with other sand-salted Marines carrying full fighting loads for 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. Debra Dunham easily spots the eldest of her four children.
“Come look, Dan,” Deb beckons to her husband.
Dan Dunham sits a safe distance from the screen and opts not to look at pictures of his son at war: “I don’t need to look. I’ve lived it for the past two years and seven months, roughly.”
Clicking to the next photo, Deb notices the back of a shaved head topped by a smidge of blond. A slight bending on top of his ear gives Jason away.
She stops clicking and steps into the kitchen for a second. Dan moves to the computer. He takes Deb’s chair and fingers his glasses - the photochromic ones that darken in sunlight. He wiggles the mouse. He clicks the cursor.
And though weary from poring over his son’s death every day for the last 30-odd months, and wary of those who would make Jason’s death a political instrument or a media sensation, and weary from shedding sudden tears while driving to and from the crane yard where he makes a living, Dan looks at the last pictures of his son.
He looks because Jason would have looked, and he looks because some matters remain unresolved. Matters of honor. Matters of rest.
“I was sitting there,” frets Deb, coming back to her filled chair.
“Now I’m sitting here,” Dan deadpans. “Move back; don’t crowd.”
Their jokey quarrelling, as much as their unadulterated affection, keeps a lasting marriage.
He asks, “When you’re teaching, do you like somebody leaning over you?”
Deb, a schoolteacher, replies, “Yeah, I can get close like this.”
Deb puts her arm around Dan, and together, practically cheek to cheek, they look at war pictures.
It’s early November, and Deb and Dan have planned a drive from their home in Scio, N.Y., to Virginia where President George W. Bush will speak at the Marine Corps’ national museum grand opening. Jason’s officers and New York’s senior senator have pushed for the Marine to receive America’s highest military decoration: the Medal of Honor.
Before Jason, the last Marine actions to earn the medal occurred in Vietnam in 1970. Only the president can confirm such a citation, and the Dunhams want
to hear him do so.
The citation means finally putting Jason to rest, said Dan.
“Peacefully and completely,” Deb added.
In fall 2003, Cpl. Dunham joined 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, based in Twentynine Palms, Calif. The battalion, aka 3/7, had just returned from its first Iraq deployment.
Mark Dean was a lance corporal returning from post-deployment leave when he first met Dunham.
“I walked into my barracks room and found a sergeant and two corporals playing the video game ‘Medal of Honor,’” said Dean, an Owasso, Okla., native. Dunham was one of the corporals.
The sergeant chewed out Dean for entering without knocking. Dean explained that this was his old room, but he would move to another.
“(Dunham) immediately stood up, introduced himself, and offered to help me find a room and help me move,” said Dean. “It shocked me ... I had no clue
who this Marine was, and he was senior to me. Senior Marines didn’t help junior Marines with stuff like that, but Jason always took care of everyone else before himself, even if he didn’t know them.”
Dunham was a poster Marine - his physical fitness test scores perfect and his military correspondence studies complete. During his previous assignment
guarding nuclear submarines in Kings Bay, Ga., the muscular, athletic Dunham and a handful of security force company Marines won Kings Bay’s 2004 Super Squad, a team competition of endurance and tactics.
Dunham attached to Kilo Company, 3/7, where leaders made him a squadleader, a role typically bestowed upon broadly developed riflemen.
Dunham, a machine gunner who mainly specialized in weapons, had much learning to do, like how to draw defense plans and draft enemyengagement instructions in standard five-paragraph fashion.
“It speaks a lot about him that he was trusted to be in that position,” said Gunnery Sgt. John Ferguson, who was Dunham’s platoon sergeant.
The brawny, six-foot-one-inch Dunham led by example and without aggression and quickly earned respect from his peers and subordinates.
Dunham’s mother said Marines under his charge later described that “he wasn’t going to ask anybody to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself.”
Within weeks after Dunham checked in at Twentynine Palms, the battalion prepared for its return to Iraq.
Dunham phoned the news to his mother in her classroom at Scio Central School.
She had paid close attention to media reports and sensed why he was calling.
Deb tried not to let him hear her sobs.
Jason flew home to Scio (pronounced sigh-oh) for winter holidays and good-byes.
“He made quality time with everybody - both sides of the family,” said Deb, who made a list of everyone Jason needed to see.
He had fun working his way through it, checking off names as he went.
“Have shot’s, Grandma,” said Jason, encouraging grandmother Pat Layton to join him for drinks. Layton, one of Jason’s cohorts, merrily obliged.
The easygoing Jason exuded cheerfulness toward children and elders alike; however, occasionally he revealed a serious side.
Talking what-if business on the back porch at Christmastime, father and son discussed Jason’s will and the likeliness of being wounded in action. Jason made
it clear he didn’t want to be in any vegetative state.
“Don’t let me be like that,” he told Dan. “I don’t want to be on life support.”
If he died, Jason wanted Dan to use the survivor money to build a back porch facing west so Deb could watch sunsets.
Deb asked Jason if he wanted to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Jason, raised in Scio, preferred to be buried in Scio. Born on the Marine Corps birthday, he preferred dress blues and military honors.
But Jay planned to live.
“He promised his men they would all come home alive, and he promised his mother he would come home,” said Dan.
His four-year enlistment was expiring in July, 2004, but Dean said Dunham extended his service contract to stay with his men for the full deployment into
September.
“I told him he was crazy and asked why he would want to extend to stay in the biggest shithole in the world,” said Dean. “And his response was to bring all his guys home to our wives, family and friends.”
In February of 2004, Dunham was in Iraq. Within a month, 3/7 was handling operations in Al Qaim. Kilo Company, commanded by Capt. Trent Gibson, operated to the west in Karabilah, and Dunham’s platoon augmented another company even farther west in Husaybah along the Syrian border.
Husaybah, Karabilah, and the ambiguous settlement in between known as the H-K Triangle, crawled with insurgents and foreign fighters anxious to rattle newcomers.
In the first days, Dunham helped fortify
3/7’s outpost in Husaybah.
Attacks from mortars and shoulder-launched rockets had Marines hunkering down, but when all was clear, the Marines resumed filling sand bags and constructing barriers.
“It got to be so routine that we were getting those mortars a few times a day,” said Ferguson.
“You just keep the helmet and flak on and wait it out.”
But the insurgents, who went relatively unseen in the first few weeks, turned out to be inept mortarmen. When Dunham was permitted to call his parents from a satellite phone, mortars began exploding in the distance.
“Hang on a minute,” he said, putting his father on hold.
Not giving up a rare telephone opportunity, Dunham got back on the line and said with a laugh, “Don’t be worried. They’re lousy shots.”
Dunham knew how to spread light in dark situations. Chem-lights were sometimes helpful, as Dean learned while winding down a security shift at a building in Al Qaim. Yukking it up all night with two other Marines, Dunham cut open a lightstick and poured its glowing chemicals all over Dean and another lance corporal.
“We were all sitting around in the dark, glowing and laughing,” said Dean. “Once everything settled down, we hit the rack for some sleep before we started our patrolling for the next few weeks.”
As Dean lay in his bed that night, a heavy sense of emotion came over him.
“I cried and prayed to God,” he said. “I had no clue what was going on.
I just felt something heavy on my heart. Till this day, I believe it was about what was going to happen two days from then.”
Around the time her son phoned home, Deb dreamed she was up all night talking with Jason, but she couldn’t make out the words. The next morning, while making the bed, Deb told Dan, “I felt like I talked to Jason all night long. We had a really good visit.”
Two weeks after the dream, Deb got a letter from Jason asking for someone’s mailing address and a family photograph to replace the one he had lost.
The letter was peculiar to Deb. She interpreted it as a good-bye.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry too much, Mom. I’ll be home when the time is right. Tell everybody I love them,’” said Deb, quoting the letter from memory.
On April 15, two weeks after the letter, she got another phone call.
When the phone rings in Scio shortly
before midnight, it’s usually not a neighbor asking
for a cup of sugar. Deb picked up and a battalion
liaison in Twentynine Palms asked for Dan, the
legal next of kin in Jason’s affairs.
Jason had been hurt by an explosion. His condition
was serious. A head injury. The Dunhams
would be notified as more information came.
Fragmented news brought worry and frustration.
Deb understood that facts needed to be confirmed.
The parents craved answers, and clearly,
few would be given at this time.
Dan feebly asked, “When do I get my
next phone call?”
Details trickled in over the next few
sleepless days and nights.
On April 14, Dunham and
a squad-sized patrol of Marines had
responded to the bursting sounds of
combat.
Lt. Col. Matthew Lopez, commanding
3/7, was conducting business with
local police when his six-humvee convoy
rode into a high-noon ambush on the
main supply route leading east to west
from Karabilah to Husaybah.
The convoy escaped a hail of rockets
and machine-gun fire, but Lopez and
five others were wounded, including an
Iraqi translator.
Minutes before, Lopez
had left Dunham’s patrol at
the Karabilah police station.
Gibson, Dunham’s company
commander, was there
to conduct affairs with the
police and to scout a company-
sized patrol base.
Ferguson, acting as
platoon commander, was
assessing perimeter security
requirements for the future
patrolling operation and
observing Dunham.
“The squad leaders run
the squad,” said Ferguson,
then a staff sergeant.
“If I see a wrong decision,
I’ll interject.”
The Marines headed to Husaybah,
mistaking the convoy ambush for a mortar
attack on the base there. When their
humvees encountered shoulder-launched
rocket fire, the Marines dismounted and
Dunham redirected two reinforced fireteams
on foot through the H-K Triangle.
The Marines dispersed 15 to 20
meters apart and trotted south. Pfc.
Kelly Miller was point man.
Ferguson said the Marines came to
an unpaved alley lined with several idling
vehicles: a small bus, a van, a white Toyota
Land Cruiser, a second sport utility
vehicle, a farmer on a tractor, sheiks in a
black luxury car, a truck that looked to
be turning around, and an unoccupied
sedan with its doors left open.
Regular civilian traffic was detouring
around the ambush site and continuing
eastward through the H-K Triangle, but
Ferguson believed some of the motorists
in the alley could be insurgents trying
to flee the scene. He ordered the Marines
to perform quick vehicle checks.
Lance Cpl. William Hampton
checked the first two vehicles. Dunham
and point man Miller approached the
third. From the Toyota Land Cruiser, a
man lunged out at Dunham and tried to
choke him. Dunham instantly thrust a
knee to his assailant’s torso and wrestled
him to the ground. Miller and Hampton
came to help Dunham, who had taken a
fighter’s advantage on top of his attacker.
But somewhere on the attacker was an
armed hand grenade.
Dunham warned his men: “No, no,
no – watch his hand!”
When the grenade rolled out,
Dunham covered it with his helmet.
Ferguson, who was on the left side of
the lined traffic, remembered Dunham
weeks earlier proposing a theory that a
Kevlar helmet could save a Marine from
a bursting grenade.
“If it was one of our grenades, no
way,” Ferguson told Dunham.
Yet the grenade under the squad
leader’s helmet was an old-school, pineapple-
style Mills Bomb, and Dunham
wasn’t going to let it hurt anybody.
The explosion dazed and wounded
Hampton and Miller, who arose from the
dust and staggered back toward radioman
Lance Cpl. Jason Sanders.
“When I saw the explosion, I thought
they were all dead,” Sanders later told
Gibson.
Sanders called for the Marines behind
him to assist Miller and Hampton before
going to his squad leader’s aid. As he
approached Dunham’s prostrate figure,
the insurgent lying next to Dunham
suddenly jumped up and attempted
to flee. Sanders raised his rifle and
killed the perpetrator.
Dunham lay facedown with a few tiny
fragments in his head. The hard, resinmolded
mesh that was his Kevlar helmet
was now scattered fabric.
Dunham had lived his last conscious
moment.
Wall Street Journal reporter Michael M. Phillips, covering the war in Iraq alongside 3/7, first introduced Dunham’s story to a mass audience with a front-page article published May 25, 2004. He later wrote the unabridged story in “The Gift of Valor; A War Story,” which narrates Jason’s life and death, from growing up in a one-trafficlight town, to giving his life in service to country, to an eight-day journey home battling a mortal brain injury.
Phillips’ reporting and the Dunhams’ close contact with the Marines of 3/7 gave Deb and Dan answers to their son’s last days.
The loss, they said, was hard to accept, but his selfless act was pure Jay.
Dan said, “From the blast, he began a journey ... to fulfill his promise to come home. Several people that we talked to said it was a miracle he lived past the blast.”
As Deb processed all the details after Jason’s passing, she said she took much comfort knowing someone was always by her wounded son’s side, holding his hand in that journey home.
A gunfight broke out as Sanders and another Marine retrieved Dunham from ground zero. Ferguson kept one enemy gunman at bay with suppressive fire, and Sanders radioed a supporting Kilo Company element, which quickly arrived and evacuated Dunham out of the H-K Triangle.
From the evacuation, he was flown by Blackhawk helicopter up a chain of care. He was first treated at a shock-trauma tent in Al Qaim and forwarded to a Navy field hospital in Al Asad, some 80 miles east by Blackhawk.
“When they first took him into triage, they assessed him and put him in the expectant room. ‘Expectant’ there means you’re expected to die,” said Deb. But he wouldn’t let go.
In Phillips’ reporting, doctors figured the comatose Marine’s condition was grave, and in battlefield medicine, where time and resources are limited, patients less likely to die take precedence.
“He moved and was breathing, so the nurses asked doctors to reevaluate him,” said Dan.
Doctors decided to fly Dunham to the Army hospital in Baghdad where he would undergo brain surgery. After a surgeon successfully removed some of the shrapnel and relieved some swelling, Dunham was transported out of Iraq by airplane.
Being moved around a lot doesn’t help with a brain injury, Dan noted. He said that at this point, doctors and nurses were just trying to get Jason home before he expired.
Dunham made one more stop at the Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, before finally boarding a plane to the United States, a week after being wounded.
Deb and Dan had not slept in days when they boarded an early-morning flight April 21 from Rochester, N.Y., to Washington, D.C. However,
Deb said the Marine Corps was “phenomenal” in handling their travel, including the drive to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
They hadn’t heard much more about Jason’s condition.
Some bandages had been removed - perhaps
a good thing. They didn’t know. They did know
their son was expected to arrive at Bethesda that
evening. Before he did though, Deb and Dan tried
to get some rest. They stayed a short walk from the
hospital at a comfort home provided by
the Fisher House Foundation.
At 10 p.m., they waited in the hospital until
Jason arrived.
“He didn’t say how he would come home,”
said Deb. “But he did.”
Deb and Dan flanked Jason’s bedsides and told
him he was home. Dan held one hand; Deb held
the other. Jason, breathing through a respirator,
held on a little longer.
“There was no Jason no more,” said Dan. Jason’s
chiseled body now lookedlimp and depleted.
The doctors were busy with tests and confirming
medical reports from Germany, so until the next step
was determined, they asked the Dunhams to get some
sleep back at the Fisher House.
The next morning, while Deb washed up in
the bathroom, she heard Dan answer the phone
in their room.
“Whatever you need to do, you do it now for him, and I’ll sign the papers later,” said Dan.
Deb came out of the bathroom and saw Dan
looking pale.
When Deb and Dan returned to the hospital,
neurosurgeons confirmed that Jason’s injury was
terminal and he would never be conscious again.
The damage was too great. He would need life
support to survive. A risky surgery would relieve
pressure, but it would not change his status.
The parents took a walk and searched for answers.
“Ultimately, it was up to me,” said Dan.
“But it was really up to both of us. We decided
Jason wasn’t going to stay that way. He didn’t
want to be that way.”
They sat with Jason for a few hours.
“As he heard our voices, his condition got
worse,” said Dan. A fever persisted. One lung
collapsed and the other was filling with fluid.
Jason had fulfilled his promise to come home
to his mother. Now he was letting go.
Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant at the time, visited the hospital.
He hugged Deb, spoke to the parents
and presented Jason with the Purple
Heart.
Dan knew what Jason would have
wanted, and life hooked up to a machine
wasn’t it. He watched as fluid swelled
and swelled in Jason’s right upper shoulder. As doctors massaged the swelling
down, Dan’s decision became clear.
“He was more or less just suffering
at this stage,” said Dan. Jason’s deterioration
was telling Dan that he was not
coming back.
“I think we’ve had enough
of that,” said Dan. He told the
doctors to tend to patients who
could use the attention.
Deb and Dan waited by Jason
as doctors cut life support. Dan
said his son’s suffering vanished
immediately. Jason relaxed and
looked more familiar, almost
smiling. He let go at 4:43 p.m.,
April 22, 2004.
The basketball court at
Scio Central School doubles as
a multipurpose auditorium with
a picture-frame stage at courtside.
The court has many uses,
but in the daytime, students at
the prekindergarten-through-
12 school primarily take to the
court for physical education.
From here, bouncing balls and
squeaking sneaker sounds echo
down the main hallway that
leads to Deb’s homemaking
classroom.
Jason was a letterman player
here on the Tigers hardwood.
He shined even brighter on the
school’s baseball and soccer
teams and graduated in 2000 as
Scio’s goal leader and baseball
MVP. He holds the single-season batting
record with a .414 average.
When he grew tall enough
to unlatch the door, young
Jay would sneak out to play basketball
before his parents awoke.
Deb, always
the teacher, had Jason work on his spelling
during games of H-O-R-S-E, which
turned into variations of spelling words.
She even had him read the TV Guide if
he wanted to watch television. A charming
scamp, no stranger to carefree antics,
Jason once dyed his hair Scio blue.
“He had that impish grin that could
get him out of anything,” said Chick
Casagrande, a close friend to Deb.
Deb recalls Jason’s playing days with
a fondness, but memories of his basketball
prowess come attached with sorrow.
When Dan and the kids pop in a home
video of young Jason in a basketball
game, Deb is reluctant to watch.
Such recollections are hard for Deb
because when Jason returned from Iraq
to a grieving Scio, the basketball court
served a different purpose. A funeral.
The capacity auditorium of more than
1,500 people overflowed with mourners
as townspeople came to honor Jason and
rally around the Dunham family.
Brother Kyle, who was 15 when Jason
died, was comforted by the preacher who
said, “God must have found others who
needed Jason more than we did.”
Many who could not fit in the auditorium
stood outside or waited on their
porches as the casket passed in procession
from the schoolhouse to nearby
Fairlawn Cemetery. Jason,
in his dress blues, was saluted with military
honors.
Jason’s scholastic athleticism made him
known throughout Allegany County, and
people from rival towns such as Wellsville,
Friendship and Fillmore, came to mourn
and support Scio’s loss.
“The whole county was grieving ... not
just Scio,” said D’Arcy Fuller, a teacher
who has taught all four Dunham children.
She said Allegany showed countywide
gestures of respect with flags lowered at
half-mast and a moment of silence.
Fuller said that because Jason hailed
from a small community - a proud, hardworking
town of 1,878 - his loss pierced
deeper into local hearts than if he had
been from a large city. Jason’s graduating
class had 37 students.
“Perhaps that’s why the impact of it
has been so great,” she said. “One person’s
loss is a huge loss because it’s not that big
of a community to begin with.”
Fuller last saw Jason at a basketball
game when he was home
from Twentynine Palms.
“He gave me the biggest,
hardest hug,” she said. “I’m glad
I didn’t know that was the last
time I was going to see him.”
The Scionian spirit is
neighborly, and the Dunhams
subscribe to that sense of community,
whether giving or
receiving.
“Deb has been there for me,
too,” said colleague and longtime
friend Casagrande. When
son Brian deployed to Iraq with
the hard-hit 3rd Battalion, 25th
Marines, based in Ohio, Deb was
her biggest comforter.
Casagrande had been distressed
by a news report that
snipers in her son’s battalion had
been killed.
“We didn’t know if my son
had been one of them,” said
Casagrande. “Deb sat with me
that whole day, in spite of the
fact that it brought back everything
for her. She was the first
one I wanted to call. And she
was there.
“And it doesn’t surprise me
how (Jason) turned out. He was always
looking out for his friends. He’s truly a
person to be respected and appreciated
for what he has done - not just in the
Marines. He will always be very special
to us here in Scio, to his Scio family.”
Nearly three years after Jason died,
the town still holds fast its support for
the Dunhams. An act of Congress saw
Scio’s post office rededicated in Jason’s
name, and the local library has a special
room in Jason’s honor. The family’s only
wish now, is that history remembers
Jason - that his gift to America and his
fellow warriors goes recognized with the
highest distinction.
But only Jason can do that. Dan and Deb act only as vessels for what
they believe would be Jason’s
wishes.
They don’t campaign.
They don’t petition. They are
invited into pundit circles and
activist forums, but they shy
from media circuits and never
get political.
Mostly they just wait. They know Jason can do it on his own.
Two days before Dunham’s
funeral in Scio, Marines,
sailors and soldiers in Iraq
paused in a ceremony paying
tribute to the corporal who
made the ultimate sacrifice
sparing Miller and Hampton,
then recovering from severe
shrapnel wounds.
Meanwhile, officers from 3/7
were investigating Dunham’s
actions in the H-K Triangle.
“It was obvious. He put his
helmet over a grenade,” said
Gibson, who helped platoon
commander 2nd Lt. Brian
“Bull” Robinson compile evidence
and witness statements
attesting to Dunham’s valor.
Lt. Col. Lopez, the battalion
commander weighed the facts.
After seeing the remnants of the helmet and hearing
witness accounts, he set in motion a nomination
for the Medal of Honor, a proposal that, according
to official criteria, requires incontestable proof and
describes extraordinary merit.
The last Marine actions to earn the medal happened
May 8, 1970, in Vietnam. Lance Cpl. Miguel
Keith’s Medal of Honor citation details a machinegun
charge that inspired a platoon facing nearly
overwhelming odds: Wounded, Keith ran into “fireswept
terrain.” Wounded again by a grenade, he still
attacked, taking out enemies in the forward rush.
Keith fought until being mortally wounded. His
platoon came out on top despite being outnumbered.
Dunham would be the first Marine
and second recipient to earn the medal
since the war in Iraq began. Army Sgt. 1st Class
Paul R. Smith posthumously earned the medal
for organizing a defense that held off a companysized
attack on more than 100 vulnerable coalition
soldiers, April 4, 2003. In the defense, Smith
manned a .50 caliber machine gun in an exposed
position until he was mortally wounded.
To earn the Medal of Honor, Dunham must
have committed a selfless deed that “conspicuously
distinguishes him above his comrades.”
The battalion commander had no doubt.
“Had he not used his helmet and body to absorb the blast of the grenade, we would
have lost at least two more Marines,”
said Lopez. “He gave his life for his
fellow Marines.”
On the 231st Marine Corps
anniversary, Nov. 10, 2006, Dan and
Deb arrived in Triangle, Va., where
President Bush was to dedicate the
National Museum of the Marine Corps.
Jason would have turned 25 that day.
The Medal of Honor nomination had
spent years and months making its way
to the White House. The Marine Corps
backed the proposal, and Sen. Chuck
Schumer gave it his public urging. It now
only needed presidential approval.
Bush nodded.
“By giving his own life, Cpl. Dunham
saved the lives of two of his men and
showed the world what it means to be a
Marine,” Bush said in front of
approximately 15,000 people.
“And on this special birthday,
in the company of his
fellow Marines, I’m proud to
announce that our nation will
recognize Cpl. Jason Dunham’s
action with America’s
highest decoration for valor,
the Medal of Honor.”
The announcement drew
a single, booming “Ooh-rah!”
- a spirited cry among
Marines - and a long applause
followed.
“As long as we have Marines
like Cpl. Dunham, America
will never fear for her liberty,”
Bush said.
Addressing Dan and Deb, who held
each other in the front row, the president
said, “We remember that the Marine who so
freely gave his life was your beloved son.”
Deb said. “At that point, Dan and I
were missing Jason a lot.”
The nation did its recognizing two
months later.
When the medal is presented
posthumously, it is encased in oak
and glass; otherwise, its bearer would
wear it around his neck. But the latest
Marine bestowed with the honor was
not present in the flesh.
In spirit, on the other hand, Jason
filled every corner of the White House.
“We wish that Jason would have been
able to be here so we could watch him,”
said Deb at the Jan. 11 ceremony. “But
we know he’s watching.”
“Jason believed that all men on this
earth should be free,” said Dan, an Air
Force veteran. “He also believed in his
friends.”
In a lively reunion of sorts, more
than 80 Marines from Jason’s battalion
soaked up their stately surroundings
- many with digital cameras. Lounging
about the White House and bedecked
in dress blues, far from the muck of war
where one another’s company is no less
appreciated, the men laughed and cried
as a band of brothers, a bond Gibson said
was forged in combat. Gibson is now a
major instructing Naval ROTC students
at Virginia Tech.
Six venerable Medal of Honor recipients
attended the ceremony, as well as
some of America’s highest military and
government figures. Seated among
others in the East Room were Vice
President Dick Cheney, Secretary of
Defense Bob Gates, Sen. John McCain,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Peter
Pace, and Marine Corps Commandant
Gen. James Conway.
Before the citation was read, the president
gave personal praise to Jason: “He had
a natural gift for leadership and a compassion
that led him to take others under his
wing. The Marine Corps took the best of
this young man and made it better.”
Bush said Jason represented the best
of young Americans.
The room came to attention as the
president took his position beside the
mother. The narrator began reciting:
“The President of the United States, in
the name of the Congress, takes pride in
presenting the Medal of Honor posthumously
to ...”
Hearing her son’s name, Deb’s body
began wrenching slightly, apparently
trying to contain her emotions. With a
tearful president at her left and Dan at her
right, Deb held their hands throughout the
citation - or they held hers. Dan and Deb’s
three children stood behind them.
The citation went on: “By his
undaunted courage, intrepid fighting
spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty,
Cpl. Dunham gallantly gave his life for
his country ...”
With the citation given, Bush presented
the family with the encased medal
— a bronze medallion hanging from
an anchor sewn to a sky-blue ribbon. And
like two months before when the president
first announced the award, Deb and Dan
received a fitting applause. But this clapping
of hands symbolized finality. The name of
a grinning, American son from Scio was
etched into history.
Dan regarded the honor as “an example
of the good in men that is still out
there - that a lot of people have.”
Befitting of Jason’s selflessness, the
parents extended the honor
to all service members.
“Their names are all
attached to this medal,” said
Dan. “They’re all courageous.
They all have valor.
It’s something that I want
them all to know: They’re
part of this medal. It’s as
much theirs as it is Jason’s.”
Up the sloping
Fairlawn Cemetery,
walking distance from Scio
Central School, stands
Jason’s tombstone. The Dunhams
visit regularly, at least
weekly - sometimes accompanied,
sometimes alone.
And when Deb does her tending there,
she’s never surprised to see anonymous
artifacts left for Jason; be it a thank-you
letter or a full beer offered by a Camaro driving
drifter.
Deb believes sometimes she can feel
Jason’s presence at Fairlawn.
Sometimes it feels humorous or comfortable
or not there at all. But when she
visited the grave site July Fourth, the
summer before the medal, shefelt uneasiness
in the air.
“It just didn’t seem right, and I didn’t
feel that he was OK,” said Deb.
“He seemed agitated or angry, and
that was the first time I had been there
when I didn’t feel like he was OK.”
Deb returned the next day and something
was still amiss. That night, Deb
dreamt of Jason for the first time since
his death:
Dan and Jason were wrestling in the
kitchen, and Jason was letting Dan win, like he usually did. He looked up over
his dad’s shoulder and he grinned.
Jason stood up. He had a mark on his
forehead contrary to where he was
injured. He said, “Mom, they just didn’t
understand that I needed to be home.
I had to come home.”
“It’s OK. You’re home now,”
said Deb.
“I’m OK. They didn’t understand
that I had to come home, but I’m OK
Mom,” said Jason.
Deb woke up from the dream.
“Dan, Dan. Are you awake? I got to
tell you something,” she said.
Dan was fast asleep and Deb
couldn’t wait for him to wake up in
the morning.
“I got to talk to Jason,” said Deb,
kind of giddy. She spent the next few
days feeling really great about the dream.
Since his passing, others have felt extrasensory
connections to Jason.
“We all feel Jason around us – not very often,
but every now and then,” said Marine buddy Dean.
“You can just tell when he’s around, and my wife and
I just talk to him. I know all the other guys do too.”
For Grandma Pat, it was a butterfly. The Maya
believed butterflies were the spirits of dead warriors
in disguise, descending to earth. Just days before,
she had watched a documentary describing something
like this when a butterfly fluttered into her
back porch and landed on her. She watched it flit
away and land on Jason’s aunt, then onto other
children.
“I was overwhelmed with joy,” said Pat. “I knew
that that butterfly had to be Jason coming back and
telling us he was OK.”
With the memory of Jason resting in
legend, Deb said she and Dan feel at peace, but
it’s too soon to tell. Nevertheless, Deb welcomes the
feeling of closure as an opportunity to start healing.
And putting Jason to rest means moving on to
the next chapter. They are still parents to three
other children, and that is where they need to focus,
Deb said.
Justin, 25, is getting married next fall. Katelyn, 14, is
showing her soccer chops. And Kyle, who just turned
18, is in what he calls his “final transitions into
adulthood.”
Kyle graduates high school this year, and though
he wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps like Jason,
he thinks he’ll first work on a college degree,
perhaps studying psychology, he said.
Long before Jason became a Marine Corps hero,
he was a hero to his parents, but so are Justin, Kyle
and Katie.
“All of our kids are heroes to us,” said Dan.
“That’s our life.”
Although Jason never sought colors or conflict,
Dan said he’d like to see a statue in Scio erected in
Jason’s likeness. He’s bashful about the idea, and
doubts he even has the energy to pursue such an
undertaking.
But it’s an idea.
“It’s something I’d like to do so that 100 years
from now, people remember that there were these
guys in Iraq,” said Dan. “Because maybe 100
years from now, Iraq will be a free and peaceful
country, and it will be due to what our military
has done. Maybe it won’t be. If it isn’t, I want
my kids and their kids to have something that
reminds them of Jason and those who have fought
in this war.”
In the meantime, history books will have to do.
