Pasadena Star-News
Slain Marine eulogized as leader
J.P. Blecksmith killed in Iraq following September deployment
By Cindy Chang
Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004 - SAN GABRIEL -- More than 1,000 people gathered Saturday to mourn James P. Blecksmith, a 24-year-old Marine who died Nov. 11 leading his platoon in house-to-house combat in Falloujah, Iraq.
At a memorial service at The Church of Our Saviour in San Gabriel, Blecksmith was remembered as a fun-loving, generous young man who took his juniors under his wing and who in his short time in Iraq proved to be an exceptionally brave soldier.
Known as "J.P.,' 2nd Lt. Blecksmith grew up in San Marino and was a football and track star at Flintridge Prep. He played wide receiver at the United States Naval Academy before being commissioned as a Marine Corps officer in May 2003.
He was deployed to Iraq in September, serving there for less than two months before he was killed by a sniper's bullet in a major military effort to capture the rebel stronghold of Falloujah.
"He picked up his rifle and he didn't flinch, he didn't balk. He counseled his platoon, trained them, prepared them, led them,' said Lt. Col. Eric Smith, who served with Blecksmith in Iraq.
"The fighting in Falloujah was some of the fiercest fighting in history,' Smith added. "How J.P. as a new lieutenant was able to actually lead that platoon, most people don't understand how. I don't understand how.'
J.P.'s older brother, Alex, recalled how J.P. was willing to give up his spot on a 4-by-400 CIF relay team after he made the team but Alex did not.
"There was no opinion or approval I coveted more than his. For if J.P. approved of it, I knew it was the right thing to do,' Alex said.
Alex Blecksmith read from an e-mail his brother sent him shortly after arriving in Iraq, in which the young officer described his pride in the accomplishments of the men who served under him.
"It's not about us, it's not about more ribbons on our chests or the promotions; it's about putting my men in a position where they can be successful, and making them do something they wouldn't otherwise do - and the rewards of watching their success,' J.P. wrote.
The church's rector, the Rev. Canon Denis O'Pray, cautioned the mourners against feeling that Blecksmith's death, in a war that critics argue was unnecessary and waged under false premises, was in vain.
One impulse among the grief-stricken, O'Pray said, might be "to condemn the war, to say that J.P. should never have been put in harm's way.'
"He didn't feel that way - why should we?' O'Pray said.
Blecksmith believed wholeheartedly that the American military was in Iraq to spread freedom and democracy and was optimistic that those goals would soon be achieved, friends and family said.
Blecksmith's flag-draped coffin was carried from the church to the adjacent San Gabriel Cemetery by a solemn procession of Marines. He was honored with a 21-gun salute and a flyover by four stunt planes performing the "missing man' maneuver, where one plane breaks off from the rest and heads skyward.
A scholarship fund at Flintridge Prep has been established in Blecksmith's name.
-- Cindy Chang can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4586, or by e-mail at
cindy.chang@sgvn.com .
