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He served with pride

Following family tradition, slain soldier joined Marines in 2001 and made light of the danger, family says

BY SAMUEL BRUCHEY | STAFF WRITER

October 30, 2005

When Jared Kremm was a child, his grandfather told him stories about fighting in a foxhole. He saw photographs of his uncle and his grandfather taken 50 years apart at boot camp in Parris Island, S.C.

And he held his mother's hand and watched veterans in pressed uniforms march in parades, and listened to people cheer for them madly.

"Jared knew all about the Marines, long before he went in," said his grandmother, Hazel Fabrizio, 74, of Islip Terrace. "The tradition, the pride, the honor. He was gung ho from the start."

When he became a man, Kremm followed his grandfather and uncle into the Marines. He enlisted after Sept. 11, 2001, and was shipped out to Iraq last year.

Last month, he began his second tour in Iraq, where he was killed on Thursday. Details about his death have been scarce. The military has said only that Kremm, a lance corporal in the 2nd Marine Division, died during a firefight in Saqlawiyah.

"He kept telling me this was what he was born to do," his mother, Nancy Young Kremm, 50, of Hauppauge, said yesterday.

That pride was evident in dozens of letters Kremm, 25, sent from Iraq. He touched on the weather, bad food, missing home and wanting to become a police officer when he got back, but never about the danger.

"Dear Ma," one recent letter began. "What's going on? Nothing much here. It is silent ... I will hopefully get promoted next month ... Sounds pretty cool. My title will be Corporal Kremm."

It was Kremm's grandfather, Herbert Young, now deceased, who enlisted in 1938 and began a family tradition of Marine service.

Kremm's uncle, Donald Young, 40, who now lives in Palm Coast, Fla., served six years as a Marine reservist in the 1980s.

As a kid, Kremm moved with his mother and older sister Jacquelynn into his uncle's house in Bay Shore after his parents divorced.

Kremm later moved to Hauppauge and graduated from high school there. He took classes at Suffolk County Community College in Selden, then joined the Marines in 2001.

He first shipped out to the Philippines, but later returned to the United States. He married a woman named Brook Walden.

They lived in Jacksonville, N.C., 10 miles from where Jacquelynn, 31, and her husband, Chris Soldano, a Marine sergeant, were stationed.

As Kremm prepared to return to Iraq last month, his sister spent hours at his house. "We talked about 9/11," she said. "He told me, 'This is all going to make a difference so that that won't ever happen again.'"

Mostly, Kremm mollified her anxiety with jokes.

As he sat on the bus leaving Jacksonville, Kremm stuck his fingers through the window, making fun of how his sister had jammed her finger in a car door when she was a kid. She said she can still see him smiling behind the glass as the bus pulled away.

"I just want to hear him laughing again," she said. "I want to hear him laughing so bad."

From Iraq, Kremm sent Jacquelynn letters about watching his laundry dry on a string, missing Burger King and wishing he could play X-Box with his brother-in-law.

He even sent handwritten "certificates" to his niece, Falynn, 11, and nephew, Christopher, 7, promising to spend time together if they behaved while he was away.

"This certificate entitles one Falynn Soldano to a whole day with her uncle Jared so long as mommy tells me that she has been good while he was gone," one of them read.

In his final letter from Iraq, Kremm told his mother not to be afraid. "You have to be strong for me, just as I have to be strong for you. There is nothing to worry about ... I will be home soon enough. I better get going. I love you and I miss you.

Jared."