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This Week

Outpouring Of Grief

Calls of condolence, support for Marine's mother
come from around the world.

JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

tographer whose picture of Cpl. Evnin
shortly before he died ran in the New
York Times, also called. Though
Takahashi only knew Evnin for a few
hours, the call meant a lot to Mindy
Evnin — as did the final photo of her
son, who was seen preparing to join a
convoy toward Baghdad.
"He looks like a little boy packing up,
like he was playing war — except he
was grown and had a real gun," she
said. As a boy, he would dress as a sol-
dier every Purim, Mindy Evnin said.
Two days before he was killed, Evnin
called his mother via a reporter's satellite
phone. U.S. Marine Chaplain Irvin
Elson reportedly met with Evnin shortly
before the fateful battle, Mindy Evnin

New York City
he mother of one Marine
from Arizona promised she
would plant a tree in Israel
every year.
Other women whose sons served in
the Israel Defense Forces sent words of
support. And old friends of his moth-
er's, who kept a kosher home with her
one summer in the Hamptons on Long
Island, called, too.
In death, it seems, Mark Evnin
reached Jews everywhere. The first
known Jewish casualty of Operation
Iraqi Freedom, Evnin opened an emo-
tional outpouring from
Jews around the world.
From Israel to
California, "people have
been calling, writing. It has
been incredible," said
Evnin's mother, Mindy
Evnin, of South
Burlington, Vt. "I don't
know why it is. Maybe it's
because the war might help
Israel," she said. "Maybe
because my father was a
rabbi. I don't know, but it
gives me pleasure."
Mark Asher Evnin, 21, a
corporal with the 3rd
Battalion, 4th Regiment of Marine Cpl. Mark Evnin of South Burlington, Vt.,
the 1st Marine Division,
front, packs a bag to leave a camp while in Iraq. He
was shot April 3 in the city was killed April 3.
of Kut, south of Baghdad,
when his unit of 800 sol-
diers came under Iraqi
said.
machine gun fire. Evnin returned fire
On April 11, Evnin came home for
but was hit in the stomach and fatally
good. The Marines were due to fly his
wounded, among the first two dozen
body from Dover Air Force Base in
U.S. fatalities in the war.
Delaware, but when the Evnin family
Reaction to his story was so strong
realized that it meant he would arrive
that some even contacted the Jewish
on Shabbat, the Marines drove Evnin's
Telegraphic Agency to ask where they
body to Vermont earlier. Relatives and
could write or to whom they could
friends helped with taharah, the ritual
make a donation. "It means a lot to
washing of the corpse; posting shomrim,
me," Mindy Evnin said.
or guards, to protect the body, and hav-
Not only Jews have responded: One
ing people say prayers.
woman, whose 19-year-old brother was
Evnin was given a Jewish memorial
killed in 1983 when Hezbollah terror-
ists blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in service at the Conservative Ohavi Zedek
Beirut, called to tell Mindy Evnin of the Synagogue in Burlington, where his
grandfather, Max Wall, is rabbi emeri-
day the Marines delivered the news to
tus, followed by a Jewish funeral with
her home.
full military honors.
Kuni Takahashi, a Boston Herald pho-

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4/18
2003

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