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foxnews.com
Young Marine Loved Family, Country
AP
Marines Staff Sgt. Scott Germosen
Thursday, January 10, 2002
NEW YORK — Long Islander Scott Germosen joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school, and left it for a brief career as a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles.
"He had that nagging," his grief-stricken mother, Myrna Washington, said Thursday. "He wanted to be a Marine again."
Staff Sgt. Germosen, 37, was the loadmaster on the KC-130 plane -- used for in-flight refueling and hauling cargo -- that crashed into a mountain in Pakistan late Wednesday as it approached a military airfield.
The crash killed the seven Marines on board in what was the worst U.S. casualty toll in the war against terrorism. The victims were based at the Marine Corps Station in Miramar, near San Diego, Calif.
"He always wanted to help his country," Washington said from her Coram, Long Island, home, an American flag taped to the front door. "He died for his country and the people he loved, and to me that makes him a hero."
Germosen was born at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, and lived on Long Island his entire youth, she said, attending Dawnwood Middle School, in Centereach, and graduating from Centereach High School in 1982.
That was the year he joined the Marine Corps.
"After that four-year tour, he moved back home," Washington said. He stayed in the active reserves and moved to California for about five years, working as a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles, before deciding to go back to the military full time.
"Ever since he was a little kid he loved to play military," Washington said. She was surrounded by family and friends Thursday, passing around photographs of her son and telling stories about him. Occasionally, she broke down in tears.
Washington described her son's widow, Jennifer, as a supportive and understanding wife. The couple has a 22-month-old daughter, Alyssa.
Washington said she last heard her son's voice in early December, for his birthday. "When I did speak with him he told me he was leaving in two weeks," she said. Washington said she knew little about Germosen's actual activities, often being told they were top secret. "I think he didn't want me to worry."
"And now that's the last time I'll ever speak to him," she said. "He loved his country. And he would do anything for his country."
Bonnie Riley, Germosen's mother-in-law, remembered him as "a good husband and a good daddy to our only granddaughter."
"He was a very nice, very intelligent man," Riley, reached at her home in Green River, Wyo., told the Daily News. "He just loved his family |
