One Of Our Own

Marine corporal from Vermont is first Jewish casualty in Iraq War.

JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

When Evnin was 6, hii parents separated, but
his father, Michael, of Rockville, Md., returned
and lived with his son from the ages of 8 to 12.
His father recalled that when Evnin was born, "he
looked like an angel. He was extremely beautiful,
almost shockingly so. He had long, blond, golden
hair, which as an infant he wore down to his
shoulders."

New York City
a a young boy, Mark Evnin insisted on
wearing a yarmulke to the Boy Scouts
and later talked of enlisting in the Israel
Defense Forces.
Now, even -without his body, the family
of the first known Jewish casualty of the
war on Iraq is sitting shivah at their home
in Burlington, Vt.
On April 1, Mindy Evnin got a call from
her son, a Marine sniper scout, who was
somewhere south of Baghdad. "It was the
first time I'd spoken to him since he was
deployed" to Kuwait from Camp
Pendleton, Calif., in February, she said.
"You can always tell his mood by his
voice, and he sounded good."
Two days later, Mark Evnin, 21, a corpo-
ral with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Regiment of
the Marines' 1st Division, was killed in the
town of Kut by Iraqi machine-gun fire.
"He was a macho kid with a gentle soul,"
his mother said this week as she was
preparing her house for the shivah. "He
was like a sabra" (native-born Israeli). And
like most Israeli men, Mark seemed to
know he was destined for military service
from a young age.
"He was always interested in the military,
ever since he was a child," recalled his
maternal grandfather, Rabbi Max Wall, 87,
of Burlington. "He had some kind of
inborn feeling that he should serve his
country; it was just a question of which
uniform he should wear."
Evnin and his grandfather grew very
close over the years. Rabbi Wall, now rabbi
emeritus of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in
Marine Cpl. Mark Evnin
Burlington, served as a chaplain with the
9th Infantry during World War II. Rabbi
Wall, who was born in Poland, told his
grandson stories of how he went to
Though Evnin did not grow up deeply religious,
Belgium, France and Germany and worked with
displaced persons.
relatives said, the extended family celebrated
Jewish holidays and Evnin had his bar mitzvah at
We had a great time together. He loved stories
the Conservative synagogue his grandfather led.
about World War II. He saw my chaplain uni-
form, and I gave him all my medals."
Mark Evnin "always would say that his zayde was
the chief rabbi of Vermont," Mindy Evnin said.
Rabbi Joshua Chasan, who currently leads Ohavi
Thinking Of Israel
Zedek, recalls that Evnin attended Hebrew school
After meeting Israeli soldiers when he became a
in U.S. Army fatigues. "There's no doubt about it,
Marine, his mother said, Evnin talked of going to
Mark did it his own way," Rabbi Chasan said.
"Vermont is a pretty liberal community, and this
Israel one day and serving in the Israeli military. "I
kid went into - the Marine Corps."
am sure it mattered to him that he was doing
something that is probably- helping Israel right
When he joined the Boy Scouts as a young boy,
now," she said.
his mother said, he insisted on wearing a yarmulke

A

even though he was not observant. When a fellow
scout said the blond-haired, blue-eyed Evnin did
not look Jewish, his mother recalled, "He turned
around and said, 'You don't look Christian!"
As he grew older, Evnin developed a wonderfully
sarcastic sense of humor, his mother said, and
loved The Simpsons, Seinfeld and the British clay-
mation characters "Wallace" and "Gromit."

An Athlete

At South Burlington High School, Evnin became
active in sports, playing lacrosse and football, as well
as snow boarding and cross-country skiing. He also
spent a good deal of time at the school's computer
imaging lab.
Evnin graduated in 1999 before attending basic
training at Camp Lejeune, N.C. "Before he was
deployed, he and his Marine buddies were reading
the Harry Potter books," Mindy Evnin said. "I love
that they were reading all this sweet stuff, because
they look like such killers."
His father and others said it was the Marines who
gave Mark Evnin a sense of direction in life. "He
metamorphisized from a gentle, loving kind of child
to a hard, serious, focused man," his father said.
His family also called him a natural leader, and
Rabbi Chasan saw that side of the young man last
summer, when his 13-year-old cousin, Sarah
Antonoff, died Of a brain tumor. When the extended
family gathered for shivah, "Mark had really come -
into his own. He helped the little kids be at ease,
playing with them," Rabbi Chasan said.
He apparently took those qualities into the
Marines. His crucial role, according to San Francisco
Chronicle reporter John Koopman, who rode with
Evnin, was both to spot Iraqi snipers and to drive a
U.S. sharpshooter, a sergeant major and the journal-
ist, as they headed toward Baghdad.
It was from Koopman's satellite phone that Evnin
made his last call to his mother. At 1 p.m. on April
3, the 800 to 900 soldiers in their convoy got into a
firelight with Iraqi soldiers. Koopman said Evnin was
_shooting back after coming under fire, and got hit,
apparently in the abdomen. His wounds did not
appear life-threatening, and the two even joked
about how Evnin would get sponge baths from the
nurses, Koopman said.
But he died while being evacuated by helicopter.
"It sounded like Mark didn't know he was dying,
which I was glad for," Mindy Evnin said.
Two days before Mark Evnin died, Rabbi Irving
Elson, a chaplain with coalition forces, had contact-
ed the family for information in the hope that he
would find Evnin and bring him matzah for
Passover, his mother said. But instead of preparing
for the holiday, the family decided to set Wednesday
as the first day of ihivah..
Mark's body was returned to Dover Air Force Base
in Delaware this week, but Mindy Evnini said she
couldn't wait for a funeral to start the shivah. "It's
taken so long for me to have a body," she said.
When he is buried, the funeral at Ohavi Zedek will
be conducted with full military honors. And he will
be interred at the Hebrew Holy Society_Cemetery in
Burlington with a military headstone. That's what
"he would have wanted," Mindy Evnin said. II

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