I know a celebrity! Really....

Ok, so I found this Sunday night/Monday morning, and very excited about it, still. This is the one that was brought home with Mike's stuff.....Mike, if you're not aware, is the front, center, Marine! Oohrah!

Marine Corps Times interview with Sgt. Maj. Estrada
Posted : Tuesday May 1, 2007 16:11:26 EDT

The following is a transcript, edited for length and clarity, of Sgt. Maj. John Estrada’s interview with Marine Corps Times. He spoke to the newspaper on April 23, two days before leaving his post as sergeant major of the Marine Corps

Hardest part
[Nearly 750 Marines have been killed in combat since Estrada became the sergeant major of the Marine Corps in 2003.]
The hardest thing for me has been seeing Marines and their families when going to visit Marines in the hospital. That’s the hardest thing. They’re young, their lives have been changed forever. The whole time, I only ran into one angry Marine family.

There is a poster that we have with me here that we took. Every time someone looks at that poster, I always point out the one Marine in the center. He got killed. I signed a poster and gave him a coin. He was with [3rd Battalion, 25th Marines]. He got killed. Those things like that has been the hardest. (He's talking about Mike!)

I will say I pain inside. I don’t show it because I know that’s why Marines joined. Not necessarily to die, they joined to go kick somebody’s butt. But I pain for them and their family every friggin’ time I read the casualty report. I pain every time because, s---, they could be my kids.

Sean Carroll. Lance corporal. I’ll remember him to the day I die. He was in a coma for a long friggin’ time. I would go to the hospital and there was no progress and it was always the same and I’d speak to his mom and dad at the foot of his bed. About the fifth week, I was at the hospital and said, “I’m not going to go downstairs because he’s still the same. I’m going to go ahead and leave.” And I walked to my car and I said, “I’m not going to do this.” I walked back in and went downstairs. I’m talking to his dad as usual at the foot of his bed and that day, he woke back out of his coma.