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Frederick E. Pokorney, Jr. |
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First Lieutenant, United States Marine CorpsFrom a press reports: 29 March 2003
CHELLE POKORNEY, HUSBAND DIED IN COMBAT:
Chelle Pokorney said she supports the Marines and knows
the Marines will help her through her period of mourning
"He was the most an honorable man you could ever, ever know and I please want everybody to know that. Everyone of you. I dont want it. I want him - he was just such a gentle giant and such an honorable Marine. And he loved his family, he loves me and my child, and he loved his family, and he also loves his Marines."
Chelle will have constant reminder of her husband right in her own home. She says their two-year-old daughter Tayla Rochelle looks just looks like her father. She says she will remember her husband each time she looks at her daughter. Chelle is planning a funeral with full military honors for her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.
Tonopah High School 1989 graduation photo of Fred Pokorney,
killed in southern Iraq when a group of Iraqi men, pretending to
surrender, instead opened fire on a group of Marines.
In this October 2001 photo provided by Wade Lieseke, Fred Pokorney
poses with his wife, Chelle, and their 2-year-old daughter, Taylor.
Credit: Family of Fred Pokorney
TONOPAH, NEVADA Fred Pokorney became a star by shooting hoops on the high school basketball court, and Friday the town gathered in that same gym to share stories, shed tears, and offer hugs in memory of Nevadas first known casualty in the war with Iraq.
Fred was a hero, Wade Lieseke, who served as a surrogate father for Pokorney since his high school days, said after the hourlong memorial service. He died a hero, and hell always be a hero to all of us.
Well miss him for the rest of our lives.
First Lieutenant. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr. was killed Sunday outside An Nasiriyah when Iraqi soldiers appeared to surrender but then opened fire. Eight other Marines, also from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina., died in the attack.
He leaves behind his wife, Chelle, and their 2-year-old daughter, Taylor. He is scheduled to be buried April 14 at Arlington National Cemetery.
Tonopah High School was an important part of his life, Principal Barbara Floto told about 350 children, students, veterans and residents lining the bleachers, many carrying small U.S. flags. He gave and took valuable memories.
Those of us who knew Fred will treasure his very being, she added. We pay tribute to a young man who will always be a part of us.
Floto then signaled student body president Beth Gaydon to present the Lieseke family with 31 red roses for each of Pokorneys 31 years.
Pokorney grew up in the Bay Area with his father, Fred Pokorney, but when he was 16, he moved to Tonopah to live with an aunt. When she died, the young man joined the Lieseke family, although he was never legally adopted.
I didnt have to he was just our boy, Lieseke said.
He excelled in sports his 6-foot 7-inch, 220-pound muscular physique landed him top spots on the varsity football and basketball teams.
And he endeared himself to many in this isolated mining-military town of 3,500 people in the eastern Nevada desert.
Many cried during the service and stood with arms around each other afterward.
Its a very small community, so it hits us hard, local resident June Downs said after the ceremony.
He was a good guy, a caring guy, considerate of others, added his former classmate J.D. Gray. I saw him at our high school reunion and he was excited about being in the service. He was doing what he wanted to do.
The Rev. Kenneth Curtis offered some comfort by reading from Ecclesiastes a passage entitled a time for everything.
Everything that happens, happens at a time of Gods choosing, he said. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to kill and a time to heal
It seemed the most fitting thing to say when youre looking for answers and there are none, he said.
Its hell when you have to bury your kids, he said after the service.
The schools choir then sang Tears in Heaven, a song Eric Clapton wrote when his young son died in an accident.
As Lieseke wept throughout the song, his daughter, Christina Uribe, rested her head on her fathers shoulder.
Her dad stroked her hair.
Words cant express what theyve endured in the last week, Christinas husband, Staff Sergeant Joe Uribe, said after the gathering.
Liesekes other daughter, Angie Casey of Reno, had a baby just one week ago and was unable to attend the service. Casey dated Pokorney for four years starting in high school. Although they lost touch, his death struck her deeply.
I just have to be strong because thats what Fred would want us to be, she said from her Reno home, her newborn crying in the background.
Liesekes wife, Suzy, has stayed with her daughter since the birth to help her with the infant and her three other children.
It upset me terribly that I couldnt be down there, she said in tears. He was just really a good kid you couldnt ask for more. He was a nice boy and who turned into a wonderful man.
The few years he was in our lives he blessed us and we provided him with stability when he needed it, she added.
Pokorney, who went to the Middle East as a Second lieutenant, was promoted posthumously effective the date of his death, the Pentagon told the Associated Press. He had been selected for a promotion, but had not received official word before his death.
Fred Pokorneys uncle, Gary Pokorney of Custer, North Dakota, said he has been in contact with the Marines biological father, who now lives in the Midwest.
He is saddened by his sons death, the uncle said, referring to the junior Fred Pokorney by a family nickname: Benny.
Hes OK, Gary Pokorney said Friday in a telephone interview. He regrets not being able to see him in recent years.
Hes disturbed that he died, but believes he died for a good cause, the uncle added.
27 March 2003:
'Gentle giant' of a Marine mourned
'I knew he wasn't coming home,' says Pokorney's widow
CAMP LEJEUNE -- When Chelle Pokorney saw her husband, Second Lieutenant Frederick E. Pokorney, off to Kuwait, something told her she wouldn't see him again.
"When he left, I knew he wasn't coming home," she said Wednesday at Camp Lejeune. "He didn't have to tell me. I had a feeling."
Pokorney, 42, died Sunday in battle near An Nasiriyah with eight other Lejeune Marines. He was a field artillery leader and was likely a forward observer with the 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment.
Chelle, a part-time nurse at Onslow Memorial Hospital, spoke to reporters Wednesday. It was her first public comment since she found out her husband was killed by Iraqi forces during an ambush.
Her voice quaking at times, she called her husband a "gentle giant" and said he loved his family, the Marine Corps and the Oakland Raiders. She said he was an honorable man, who lived up to the Marine Corps' standards of "honor, courage and commitment."
She couldn't explain why she knew she would never see her husband again when his bus pulled away for the first part of the journey to his deployment to the Persian Gulf and war with Iraq.
"I think it was the love that we had," she said.
But she couldn't ask him not to go.
"What can I do?" she asked. "He was a Marine. He did what he loved."
The news has been hard on their 2-year-old daughter, Taylor Rochelle, "his spitting image," she said.
"She is hurting now," she said. "My daughter is going to suffer not having a father, but she had him for a very short time."
Frederick Pokorney is going to get a full military funeral in Arlington National Cemetery, with all the honors befitting a hero, she said.
She said it was important to support the families of Marines deployed in Iraq now. Most of them receive little contact while their husbands are deployed in conflict.
"The wives are brave," she said. "We need to support them as a nation."
Chelle last spoke with her husband on March 4. It wasn't their anniversary, but he knew he wouldn't be able to call her later, and he wanted her to know how much he loved her, she said.
Their seventh wedding anniversary would have been Saturday.
"That call was a blessing," she said.
She said it was also important to remember the Marines who are still in Iraq.
"There are many Marines that are still over there," she said. "My husband led them until it was his time."
Senator Reid's Statement On the Death of Marine
Second LieutenantFrederick E. Pokorney, Junior
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Nevadans have lost one of our own in the war against Iraq. Frederick Pokorney of Tonopah was killed in battle in Iraq on Sunday. Nevadans will always be grateful for his sacrifice. The world is a better place because of his service to his country.
My thoughts and prayers are with Fredericks wife and family today, and with the people of Tonopah who grieve for their friend and neighbor. I remain committed to helping all our Nevada servicemen and women in any way I can. I hope all Nevadans will join me in that effort.
Frederick Pokorneys death is a loss for all of us. Its the first loss that Nevada has suffered in this war. We all hope that it will be the last. Marine's widow says war coverage tries families
JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA -- March 27, 2003 - The wife of a Marine killed in combat in Iraq says the intense media coverage and instant images of battle carnage are making the war especially tough on the families of military personnel.
Shelley Pokorney of Jacksonville said the massive coverage of the war brings raw information to families worried about their loved ones. "It makes it worse," she said. "It's horrible for the families."
Pokorney, who faced a horde of reporters in a news conference at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base, said she had a message to broadcast about the loss of her husband, Second Lieutenant. Frederick Pokorney Jr.: "He's our hero, and he's a hero for our nation. I'm so proud, and I just want to let you guys know that," she said.
Her husband, an artillery officer, was one of nine Marines from Camp Lejeune killed over the weekend in Nasiriyah when Iraqi soldiers faked a surrender and fired on Marines. The attack was widely reported well before official word of casualties came from the Department of Defense.
Marine Corps officials at Camp Lejeune confirmed the toll late Monday as chaplains began notifying families in Jacksonville and elsewhere.
Besieged with calls from local and national media outlets, Pokorney and her family scheduled a news conference at her home in a Jacksonville suburb but moved it to Camp Lejeune to accommodate the large turnout. They faced television cameras, photographers and radio and newspaper reporters.
Pokorney, who said she wants her husband to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, said he was a Marine doing what he wanted to do for his country.
"There's good and evil in this world. That's what's going on," she said. "And he was the good."
Press Report: 26 March 2003:
TONOPAH -- If the U.S. Marines were looking for a Marine to show off to the rest of the world, Scond Lieuteant Fred Pokorney could have been that man, said people in this small central Nevada town where he went to high school and still has many friends.
"That's the best thing you could say about Fred," said Wade Lieseke, who served as sheriff of Nye County for 12 years and was the man Pokorney considered his father. "He had character. He had morals. He had integrity. He was the epitome of what a Marine should be."
Pokorney, 31, was killed in battle Sunday when a group of Iraqis feigned surrender and instead shot a group of Marines dead. He was Nevada's first casualty in the war against Iraq.
"Anyone that was blessed by knowing Fred has suffered an indescribable loss. We all hurt deeply," the family said in a statement issued in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where his wife, Carolyn Rochelle, and 2-year-old daughter, Taylor, live.
Officially, the Marine Corps will say only that they are still investigating the Sunday encounter that left Pokorney and at least eight other Marines dead in the vicinity of An Nasiriyah, Iraq.
"We just don't have the information to say what happened," Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Owens said in a telephone interview Tuesday from the Marines' forward command at Camp As Sayliyah, near Doha, Qatar.
But after the battle Sunday it was widely reported that the Marines at An Nasiriyah were killed when an Iraqi unit holding a white flag opened fire as U.S. forces approached.
Pokorney's family is making arrangements to bury him in Arlington National Cemetery.
"I don't know what his family's going to do," Lieseke said. "He was just their rock."
Pokorney's wife, known as Chelle, was not talking to reporters Tuesday. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., spoke to her.
"You can tell that she was very proud of him and that he was going to Iraq to make the world safer," Berkley said. "He was a good husband and good father. She obviously had deep love and affection for him."
Lieseke said Pokorney met Chelle while he was stationed in Washington state a few years ago. They married about four years ago, he said.
Pokorney enlisted in the Marine Corps in February 1993 and was promoted in March 2001 to a command field artillery officer, according to Marine Corps spokesman Michael Giannetti. He was assigned to the Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. The unit left in January from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
Lieseke, 52, said he met Pokorney about 15 years ago, when the teenager was dating Lieseke's daughter. Pokorney was living with an aunt in Tonopah because, Lieseke said, his mother had died and he did not want to live with his biological father in California.
But Pokorney's aunt died when he was about 17 years old, Lieseke said, and Lieseke and his wife, Suzy, took him in.
"He stayed here with us," Lieseke said during an interview Tuesday in his home. "We raised him like our own. He listed us as his mother and father on all his military records."
Pokorney was remembered around Tonopah on Tuesday as a star athlete, a solid student and a dedicated Marine and family man.
"We're going to miss a good person, that's for sure," said George Robertson, who owns a Chevron station in town. He said his son went to high school with Pokorney.
At Tonopah High School, Principal Barbara Floto said Pokorney's death hit some of the students hard.
"Once they realized the impact of the loss of an alumni, they changed from, `Oh, this war doesn't necessarily affect us here,' to, `Wow, this really hits home,' " she said.
Students in the school's leadership class made banners reading "God Bless America" and "We support our troops" that were hung in the hallways on Tuesday.
Floto said the students were proud of one they painted in Marinelike camouflage colors that paid tribute to American troops.
Pokorney was particularly adept at sports. He stood 6 feet, 7 inches tall, Lieseke said, and played both football and basketball.
He played wide receiver, tight end and outside linebacker on the Muckers football team. He was the basketball team's center, recalled Jim Smyth, a Las Vegas attorney, who was his teammate and classmate and "rode long bus rides" with him. "I'm horribly saddened by his death. ... He was a quiet kind of guy. All he was about was playing sports and hanging out with his girlfriend.
"Unlike the rest of (the) kids from the desert, he kept his nose clean. He didn't go out and drink beer. He was quiet and reserved and did his thing," Smyth said.
Fighting back tears, Janet Dwyer, secretary at the high school, recalled his return to Tonopah after boot camp. "I remember him coming back and being all excited in uniform. He was just so proud to be a Marine."
In Washington, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who flew combat missions in the first war against Iraq, called Pokorney a "hero among heroes."
Floto, the school principal, said Gibbons called the school on Tuesday to offer whatever help he could.
She said a memorial service is planned for Pokorney at 8 a.m. Friday at the school.
Lieseke, who served as a helicopter gunner in the Army during the Vietnam War and received two Purple Hearts, said Pokorney excelled as a Marine because he had always sought order and stability in his life.
"Fred's mood was always serious," said Lieseke, who spent 22 years with the Sheriff's Department before losing a bid for a fourth term as sheriff last year. "He liked the discipline. He liked the order."
He received his most recent promotion after graduating from Oregon State University with a degree in military science, Lieseke said.
"The Marine Corps decided he was officer material and sent him through college," said Lieseke. But he added, "A lot of good it does him now."
As proud of Pokorney as Lieseke is, he said he is also bitter that the young man had to go to Iraq at all. "There's not a million Iraqis worth Fred's life," he said.
He said he is hazy about the circumstances of Pokorney's death, and suspected he will always remain so.
"I'm just not sure it's for us to be the liberators of Iraq. Why does it always have to be us?" he asked.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003:
North Carolina Town Grieves After Marines' Deaths
JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA -- It was supposed to be a joyful week for Corporal Jarred Pokora, with a brief leave to celebrate the birth of his daughter before a possible deployment to Iraq. But news that at least 11 Marines from Camp Lejeune have been killed in Iraq has plunged this garrison town into mourning.
"You live, you work, you do everything with these guys," said Pokora, a 21-year-old member of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force from Springfield, Illinois.
He serves in the same regiment as Second Lieutenant Frederick Pokorney Jr., one of the nine Marines killed Sunday in fighting near An Nasiriyah, 230 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Pokorney's brother-in-law, Rick Schulgen, said the family was grieving for "a proud father, a proud husband and a proud Marine" that they hope to bury in Arlington National Cemetery.
"His first love was his family. His second love was the Marines," Schulgen said. "Anyone that was blessed by knowing Fred has suffered an indescribable loss. We all hurt deeply."
Also among those killed was Lance Corporal David Fribley, 26, of Fort Myers, Florida. His father said Fribley knew Americans could face tactics like those used by the Iraqis near An Nasiriyah.
"That's part of war," Garry Fribley said from the family's home in Atwood, Indiana "It's time to take the gloves off. We're so intent on being the nice guys, and they (Iraqi soldiers) are not going to abide by anything."
Two other Camp Lejeune Marines have died in non-combat accidents.
The U.S. flag near the USO center flew at half staff and an enormous yellow bow was tied to a railing outside. Some 17,500 of the 30,000 Marines assigned to Camp Lejeune are overseas, and flags and signs in their support dot roadsides and businesses all over Jacksonville.
Matt Sutton, 35, a Marine corporal in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said the deaths have hurt the Camp Lejeune community.
"I feel for the Marines and for their families," said Sutton, now a service manager at a tire company. "I anticipated casualties. It's not a piece of cake like it was last time."
Pokorney, 31, lived in a cream-colored house outside Camp Lejeune. A white mailbox at the end of the driveway was adorned with a pink bow, interlaced with a red, white and blue ribbon.
Pokora knew Pokorney's name, but didn't know him; the two were in different battalions. He said he was torn between grief for his lost comrades, joy at the arrival of his baby and his own preparations for war.
"The training is a lot more serious that we're doing now," he said. "There's a bigger reason to train harder."
Among the Camp Lejeune Marines still overseas is Private David Stone, 32 - on his first combat operation, his wife said. Sharea Stone said her husband is assigned to field artillery in Iraq.
"When my husband left (in January), I just thought of him being overseas. I never looked at it as I look at it now," said Stone, 29. His absence now is "stressful, very stressful. I think about him, whether he is OK."
In a Jacksonville trailer park, children's toys dotted the yard outside the mobile home Sgt. Michael E. Bitz shared with his wife, Janina, and their four children.
The family included infant twins Bitz never saw. He left for Iraq in January, the babies were born in February and he died in combat on Sunday.
Bitz's mother, Donna Bellman, said her son drifted from job to job after graduating from high school in Ventura, Calif. She urged him to join the Marines, and she never worried until the war began.
"I had this terrible feeling since he shipped out in January. ... I kept trying to picture a white bubble around him to keep him safe," she told the Ventura County (Calif.) Star. "But it didn't work."
Also among Sunday's victims was Corporal Jose A. Garibay, 21, of Orange County, California. Janis Toman, a resource specialist at Newport Harbor (California) High School, received a letter from him Monday and was putting together a package of cookies and candy when she learned he was dead.
"It felt like a punch in the stomach," she said. "He's one of the kids I feel I made a difference in his life. He's one of the reasons you want to teach."
March 27, 2003:
An Oklahoma couple is mourning the loss of their grandson, a U.S. Marine killed in combat.
Marine Second Lieutenant Frederick E. Pokorney Jr., 31, of Tonopah, Nevada, was killed Sunday during an ambush in An-Narisriyah, Iraq.
One set of Pokorney's grandparents lives in Pauls Valley. Pokorney also trained at Fort Sill in Lawton last summer.
Chelle Pokorney, the soldier's widow, called her husband a hero.
"We've lost a wonderful person. We've lost a wonderful Marine. And this nation is going to grieve. And I want us to grieve. And I want us to go on and I want to make this the most positive thing that has ever happened to me because it has been the most horrible experience. But I hope to go forth and carry my husband. He was a hero. He died a hero," she said.
Pokorney is survived by his wife and a young daughter.
Wade Lieseke, left, comforts his daughter, Christina Lieseke, during a memorial service for fallen U.S. Marine Frederick Pokorney, Friday, March 28, 2003, at Tonopah High School in Tonopah, Nevada. Lieseke raised Pokorney as his son, although he never formally adopted him.
Wade Lieseke, left, comforts his daughter Christina Lieseke as her husband U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Joe Uribe looks on during a memorial service for fallen U.S. Marine Frederick Pokorney, Friday, March 28, 2003 at Tonopah High School in Tonopah, Nevada.
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