Remembering Julian

A year ago this Memorial Day weekend we headed down to Tallahassee in what was originally an (as it turns out, ill-fated) effort to go to our friends Pete and Ysonde's 25-year anniversary party and high school graduation party for their oldest daughter, Erin. Although we didn't make it to that, we did get to go canoeing on the Wakulla River with other friends a year ago today (Memorial Day Saturday). What ended up being a focus of the trip was the death - the previous week - but by dates - a year ago Thursday (May 22) - on a Tuesday, I believe - of a friend of Vincent and ours from the old Hidden Villas apartment complex, where Stephanie, Vincent, and Frisco lived for two years - between living at Mom's and moving to Minnesota. Vincent hung out with a bunch of kids in the complex, but his closest friends was Jesse (a year younger, from a different school) and his family. We also became friends, with Jesse, his older brother Julian, and their parents, Jerry (who worked in the same office as my friend Andrew for the Florida Public Service Commissioner) and Meredith, whose painting of the side of our apartment building at Hidden Villas (which for a while was a big source of artistic inspiration to her - the whole area around the complex, with its lush grass and palm trees (the trash doesn't show up in her paintings/art work). Julian was a sensitive kid, worked hard to make it through the alternative public high school in Tallahassee (not unlike Vincent's current school), where my friend Melanie once taught. During his senior year, he signed up to join the Marines (which seemed an unlikely fit). But even as his mother protested the Iraq war and while he got sent off to Iraq, he seemed to thrive in the military where his colleagues apparently enjoyed having someone around who didn't fit the stereotypical military service personality. Besides video games, something that Julian had been good at (and which Vincent loved hearing about) was playing Paintball (which, more or less coincidentally, Vincent is slated to do this weekend), which apparently wasn't terrible practice for being in the military in Iraq. A week before our first trip to Tallahassee in 1 1/2 years, which we had already scheduled, we heard the news that a truck Julian had been riding in in Anbar province had been struck by an improvised explosive device, which had killed Julian. Julian, then 22 and a corporal, left his wife Melissa, who'd we met several times, then 20. For better or worse, Julian is the only person - to this date - we know who's died in Iraq. While in Tallahassee, on Thursday we went to Julian's beautiful memorial service in Tallahassee's lovely Maclay Gardens, which Stephanie and Vincent had never seen, and then to a reception and Purple Heart award ceremony, at the American Legion hall on Lake Ella, which we have all circled. Of course, a year later as Memorial Day weekend we remembered Julian, the war, his death, and the funeral more sharply again. Apparently this past Thursday, in Tallahassee, at Julian's old high school, recently moved from the old African-American Lincoln High School, in Frenchtown, where my family's first Tallahassee church once met, to an old elemtnary school, a memorial to Julian and a peace garden were dedicated (see pictures above - not taken by us, obviously, since we're in Louisville). My mother tells me there is also a controversy about an authorized video about Julian, which I don't think we've been able to find, though we did find a slide show for Julian and a colleague who died with him. As much as Julian thrived in the military, going through all of this plus seeing "No End in Sight" and even "Taxi to the Dark Side" were off to turn me more against this war.

We wish the best to Meredith, Melissa, Jerry, Jesse, and all of Julian's friends and family members.