Richard Remp, who was receiving hospice care in Maryland, received his diploma Friday thanks to a whirlwind effort that involved one school superintendent driving 4.5 hours to reach him in time. He died Sunday, said James Cappuccilli, second vice commander of American Legion Post 247 in Poolesville, Maryland.

“All the dominoes lined up,” said Cappuccilli, a Marine veteran. “And if one little piece was not in place, none of this would have occurred.”

During World War II, a 17-year-old Remp joined the Marine Corps, and he would go on to serve for more than 20 years, DC News Now reported in 2021.

As a gunnery sergeant, Remp served as a door gunner in the Vietnam War, according to Cappuccilli, who pointed out that he could have avoided that dangerous work but chose it anyway.

While on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam in December 1966, Remp helped extract nine Marines who were surrounded by Viet Cong forces, DC News Now reported. With his helicopter hovering over the pickup area for more than an hour under fire, Remp fired more than 1,000 rounds at enemy forces, enabling the Marines to be saved, according to the outlet.

Despite a lifetime of proven toughness, Remp was a gentle man, “a peach,” Cappuccilli said.

“You would have never known he was a Marine, other than we talked a lot of Marine stuff,” he said.

And Remp had a mischievous sense of humor, said Cappuccilli, who said the nonagenarian was “funny, funny, funny.”

In February, Cappuccilli, a former high school guidance counselor, had the idea of honoring Remp by securing him a high school diploma. Initially believing Remp was a graduate of Sharon High School in Sharon, Pennsylvania, Cappuccilli got in touch with school officials there, he said.

Justi Glaros, superintendent of the Sharon City School District, quickly agreed to speak with with her school board and see what she could do.

Glaros learned that Pennsylvania allowed the awarding of high school diplomas to veterans who didn’t graduate from high school because they had served in World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam War. Remp had served in all three.

“From our board, it was no question, 100%, we would like to give Mr. Remp an honorary diploma,” Glaros said.

But as she dug through yearbooks, she discovered there had been a mixup: Remp actually had attended a different high school nearby. That school board got to work on securing a diploma.

On May 14, Cappuccilli learned Remp had been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer and was in hospice care. He called Glaros to tell her Remp was very ill and to thank her for her efforts, he said.

Glaros wasn’t giving up. She reached out to the nearby school to see if it could get the diploma to Remp in the next few days, but school officials told her they couldn’t speed up the process.

So Glaros talked to her own school board president and, on Friday morning, got Remp’s diploma printed. Fearing it wouldn’t reach Remp in time if she mailed it, she decided to make the 4.5-hour drive to Maryland herself, she said.

As Glaros stepped foot out of her car, Cappuccilli recounted, he told her, “You’re going to heaven, because this act puts you there.”

For Glaros, meeting the World War II veteran was like meeting a rockstar, she said. At first, it made her nervous.

“It was just an incredible honor to be able to give that to him,” she said. “When I was speaking with him, it was like we had been best friends forever.”

Remp told the crowd of family and friends by his bed that he was “really happy,” ABC 7 reported.

“You people just don’t know what it means to me,” Remp said, according to the outlet. “I’ll cherish this for the rest of my life.”

The next day, Saturday, Remp was speaking with pride about that diploma even as he began to fade, according to Marine veteran Julien Singh, commander of American Legion Post 247.

Glaros said she was glad she had the opportunity to give back to Remp. She said she tries to instill in her students the importance of being good to others.

“For me, it was a no-brainer,” she said. “It was just an act of kindness.”

The Criminal Investigations Division of Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, arrested the pair for trespassing and notified ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, office in Washington, office spokesperson James Covington told Marine Corps Times in a statement Thursday.

Deportation officers arrested the two people, whom Covington described as “Jordanian noncitizens.”

“Both individuals will remain in ERO custody pending removal proceedings,” Covington said.

The pair had driven up to a gate of the base in a box truck and, when questioned by military sentries, claimed to be Amazon subcontractors making a delivery to the town of Quantico, Virginia, which is accessed through the base, Marine spokesman Capt. Michael Curtis told Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.

When military police directed the two to go to a holding area to undergo standard vetting procedures, the driver instead went past that area and attempted to drive onto the base, Curtis said. The base’s law enforcement put up the vehicle denial barriers, blocking the truck from getting farther onto the base, and detained the pair.

Potomac Local News first reported the attempted breach.

The Virginia base is home to Marine Corps Combat Development Command, which is dedicated to modernizing the force, along with some of the service’s training schools and other elements. Other Defense Department components and federal law enforcement agencies also have a presence on the base.

Former Pfc. Joshua Cobb, 23, of Trenton, New Jersey, was charged via complaint with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey said in a news release.

Records of the alleged threats start in December 2022, when a social media user with an IP address linked to Cobb’s residence in New Jersey declared he was planning to “erase” white people in a shooting, according to the complaint.

“I want to cause mayhem on the white community,” the user wrote. “The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles.”

On another social platform, a user who went by the name “1dayUsuffer” posted in spring 2023 of his hope of becoming a serial killer.

The user made several posts expressing a desire to commit mass violence, and said the posts would serve as “evidence” and “clues” for “when im done.”

“I’d probably (overdose) on my own adrenaline after the 10th body goes down,” he wrote in one post.

In another post, the user said he had killed his cat with a crossbow.

“Very bloody scene and I loved it,” he wrote.

The user described a family history of schizophrenia but said he refused to get evaluated lest he lose his firearms license.

FBI agents later used IP addresses and other clues to link Cobb to the account, the complaint said.

In June 2023, Cobb started boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, Marine spokeswoman 2nd Lt. Giselle Cancino said in an emailed statement to Marine Corps Times on Tuesday. He became a private first class in September 2023.

He checked into Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, in February, as a rifleman with 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, according to Cancino.

FBI agents seized Cobb’s phone and interviewed him on the California base April 2, according to the complaint.

During the interview, Cobb admitted he had written the posts, and he specified the gym and grocery store he had considered as targets for an attack, the complaint said. He told the FBI agents he had access to guns through people he knew, including a relative who legally owned firearms.

When FBI agents informed him that his cellphone was being seized, Cobb became irate and said, “These are the things that make someone want to do the things we talked about,” according to the complaint.

On his phone were notes from April 2023 and May 2023 expressing his desire to kill and detailing how to bring guns into New Jersey, according to the complaint.

The Marine Corps discharged Cobb on Friday, according to Cancino, who did not specify the nature of the discharge. During his brief time in the Marine Corps, Cobb received a Certificate of Commendation but no personal awards, and he did not deploy, the spokeswoman said.

Cobb has been in federal custody since his arrest Monday, according to court records. His bail hearing is set to occur this Friday.

He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the news release.

Saverio Viggiano, a federal public defender with the District of New Jersey who is representing Cobb, said the public defender office doesn’t comment on cases.

Brooklier, who had served as a transportation and logistics officer and attained the rank of captain, mulled getting his master’s degree in criminal justice or joining the civilian workforce.

He instead chose to make a return to the military. Just not as an officer.

Brooklier, 29, enlisted in the Marine Corps in January, chasing a lifelong dream of earning the eagle, globe and anchor.

The cut in pay from captain to private first class — from more than $6,806 a month to $2,261, according to the military’s pay tables — didn’t throw him off.

“For me, it’s just about the experience,” he told Marine Corps Times in an interview Wednesday, two days before his boot camp graduation. “You only live once.”

As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, Brooklier felt inspired by the Marine Corps’ “Semper Fidelis” motto.

But Brooklier pursued Army ROTC at Washington State University, and received his Army commission after graduating in 2018. After more than four years on active duty, he decided it was time to start fresh.

Enlisting appealed to Brooklier more than pursuing a commission for two main reasons, he said.

First of all, he wanted to do the Crucible, the grueling, 54-hour-long exercise that caps off the enlisted-only boot camp.

Second, should he ever receive his commission in the Corps, he felt he would be a better leader of Marines for having been an enlisted Marine himself, he said.

Brooklier went through the Marine Corps enlistment process with a recruiter in Killeen, Texas: Staff Sgt. Lafayette Halmon.

“I respected his high-level of commitment and conviction,” Halmon said in a news release. “It was a slow process, but he was willing to step backwards, basically from scratch, to move forward and earn his way into the Marine Corps. It motivated me in a way to put in the work for him and give him the opportunity to earn his title.”

When Brooklier stepped off the bus at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in the winter, it was a “shockwave,” but a good shockwave, he said. He was no longer an individual: For the next few months, he would be a part of a platoon.

In the 35-minute interview with Marine Corps Times, Brooklier didn’t complain once about boot camp.

“I knew it was going to be very hard, but just the title of becoming a Marine was all I stuck onto,” he said, adding, “I came here for a reason.”

Brooklier said he wasn’t sure what his drill instructors made of him. They didn’t treat him differently from the other recruits, he said, though they did encourage him to share with the rest what he had learned from his time in the Army, including the ethos that even small tasks serve a broader mission.

The biggest difference between his Army ROTC training and Marine boot camp was that Brooklier was around his fellow recruits 24/7, living with them for three months straight, he said.

Another difference was the emphasis on details, like squared-away uniforms, according to Brooklier. As a budding Army officer, he had been trained to focus on the bigger picture.

Toward the end of boot camp, Brooklier finally got to do the Crucible. And it was indeed challenging, both physically and mentally — especially during the nighttime hikes, he said, when attention to details like proper gear and lighting was critical.

When Brooklier finally received the eagle, globe and anchor insignia signifying he had earned the title of Marine, he teared up, he said.

During the interview with Marine Corps Times, a few days before graduation, he said he was looking forward to putting on his service uniform and marking how far his platoon had come.

His plan for his post-boot-camp leave? Return to Los Angeles. Check in with his family. Sleep. Recover from training. Eat some sushi. Keep up his fitness.

After that, Brooklier will head to the School of Infantry-West at Camp Pendleton, California, to train as an infantryman.

And maybe one day he will pursue a commission, again, and become a Marine officer.

“Only time will tell,” he said.

The United States is considering deploying an elite Marine security team to Haiti because of a deteriorating security situation there, according to a defense official.

The Marines would be deployed at the request of the State Department, according to the defense official. Marine Corps Times asked the State Department for further details Thursday and didn’t receive a response.

“Deploying a FAST platoon is one option at the DoD’s disposal should the DoS request assistance with security at the U.S. Embassy in Port Au Prince,” Maj. Mason Englehart, a spokesman for Marine Corps Forces South, wrote in an email to Marine Corps Times on Friday.

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry is struggling to stay in power as he tries to return home, where gang attacks have shuttered his country’s main international airport and freed more than 4,000 inmates in recent days.

Henry remained in Puerto Rico as of midday Wednesday. He landed in the U.S. territory on Tuesday after he was barred from landing in the neighboring Dominican Republic, where officials closed the airspace to flights to and from Haiti.

In 2023, more than 8,400 people in Haiti were reported killed, injured or kidnapped, more than double the number reported in 2022. The U.N. estimates that nearly half of Haiti’s 11 million people need humanitarian assistance, but the 2024 humanitarian appeal for $674 million has received just $17 million — about 2.5% of what’s needed.

On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Haiti urged Americans in the country to depart as soon as possible and said it would be on limited operations Thursday.

“Embassy operations may be further affected during the week because of gang-related violence and its effects on transportation and infrastructure,” the embassy said in the security alert.

The Corps’ fleet antiterrorism security teams, often known as FAST, are deployed around the world for limited periods of time to reinforce or recapture U.S. assets.

FAST Marines receive specialized training on noncombatant evacuation operations, close-quarters battle, military operations in urban terrain, convoy operations, shipboard operations and specialized security operations, according to a page on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

The teams are part of the Yorktown, Virginia-based Marine Corps Security Force Regiment.

In 2019, fleet antiterrorism security team Marines embarked a U.S. merchant vessel to provide security as it transited the Strait of Hormuz, located between Oman and Iran.

In 2010, after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, they were sent to assist the Marine security guards who already had been guarding the U.S. embassy in the capital Port-au-Prince.

At a press conference Wednesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, denied that the United States was considering sending U.S. forces to Haiti.

Jean-Pierre said noted that Kenya had agreed to send police officers on a security mission to Haiti.

“So, that was recently signed, and that’s going to move forward,” she said. “But there is no plan to bring U.S. forces into Haiti.”

In 2021, President Joe Biden sent Marines from the Marine Security Guard Security Augmentation Unit to the Port-Au-Prince embassy “out of an abundance of caution” following the assassination of the Haitian president but insisted sending U.S. forces to stabilize the country was “not on the agenda.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The anti-affirmative-action group Students for Fair Admissions filed lawsuits this fall seeking to end the use of race in admissions at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Students for Fair Admissions asked the two judges assigned to the lawsuits to ban affirmative action in the institutions immediately, before the cases went to trial.

But the judges put off making a decision on the contentious issue of affirmative action in the service academies, instead opting to let the lawsuits run their course.

To answer whether the use of race in admissions at West Point was constitutional, Judge Philip Halpern of the Southern District of New York wrote in his opinion Wednesday that he would need to see the “full factual record,” rather than just the early filings in the case.

West Point educates future Army officers, while the Naval Academy is for future Navy and Marine officers. Pentagon data from recent years has shown that, overall, civilian universities’ ROTC programs are the leading source of officers’ commissions.

The lawsuits against the academies came a few months after the Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional for civilian universities to provide a boost to applicants on the basis of their race. In that landmark decision, the court stopped short of banning affirmative action in the service academies, citing their “potentially distinct interests.”

Students for Fair Admissions, the same group that successfully challenged affirmative action in civilian universities at the Supreme Court, argued the service academies’ admissions policies amounted to illegal racial stereotyping. The group urged the judges to act now to prevent certain white applicants from undergoing what it characterized as an unfair process during the current admission cycle.

Halpern declined to do so, on the grounds that it was too early in the lawsuit to make that kind of decision. West Point hadn’t gotten the chance to lay out its argument and facts fully, so the judge was unwilling to provide “the extraordinary and drastic remedy” of a preliminary injunction, a step that would have upended the academy’s approach to admissions mid-cycle, he wrote in his opinion.

Judge Richard Bennett, of the District of Maryland, relied on similar logic in his Dec. 20 opinion explaining why he wouldn’t grant a preliminary injunction banning affirmative action in the Naval Academy.

Students for Fair Admissions is appealing Halpern’s decision not to issue a preliminary injunction in the West Point case, according to court documents.

The group has argued that affirmative action is a discriminatory and illegal policy that erodes internal and external trust in the military. The academies and their supporters have countered that affirmative action — by increasing racial diversity in the officer corps — prevents internal strife, builds faith in the military among the public, and aids recruitment and retention.

Defenders of affirmative action in the academies have noted that the officer corps is less racially diverse than the enlisted ranks: Nineteen percent of enlisted active-duty service members in 2022 were Black, compared to 9% of officers, according to Pentagon data.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is representing West Point, and the Justice Department’s Civil Division is representing the Naval Academy. Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the New York office, declined to comment.

The Justice Department’s Civil Division and lawyers for Students for Fair Admissions did not respond to a request for comment by Military Times’ deadline.

The National Association of Black Military Women and left-leaning legal organizations have weighed in on the lawsuits against the U.S. Military Academy and the Naval Academy, filing briefs in defense of the academies’ use of race as a factor in admissions decisions, often known as affirmative action.

In June, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that affirmative action in higher education violated the clause of the Constitution guaranteeing equal protection under the law. But Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a footnote that the decision didn’t apply to the military’s service academies, which presented “potentially distinct interests.”

The footnote left the door open for litigation seeking to ban affirmative action in those military institutions.

A group opposed to affirmative action has walked through that door, suing two service academies for considering race as an admissions factor, arguing the policy is unfair and illegal. The National Association of Black Military Women’s recent briefs defend the policy, making the case that racism still exists in the military and racially diverse leaders can ameliorate it.

“For people to think that there is no racism in the military, that’s a false narrative,” retired Army Col. Irma Cooper, the association’s vice president for operations, said on Friday.

In the fall, Students for Fair Admissions, the same anti-affirmative-action advocacy group that successfully challenged affirmative action in civilian universities, turned its attention to the service academies. It filed lawsuits against the Army’s U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, for what it characterized as unlawful racial discrimination.

The National Association of Black Military Women, the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued in a friend-of-the court brief filed Nov. 29 that affirmative action at the U.S. Military Academy, which educates future Army officers, was “critical to the success of Black women in the military and to the military’s success.”

Friend-of-the-court briefs, also known as amicus briefs, are filed by entities that aren’t directly involved in a case but share their insight or expertise.

Nearly the same set of groups, with the difference being the addition of the ACLU Foundation of Maryland and the subtraction of the New York Civil Liberties Union, on Dec. 6 filed a similar brief in the case against the Naval Academy. That academy educates future officers for the Navy and Marine Corps.

The use of race in admissions

In arguing that affirmative action is necessary, the amicus briefs point to the low number of Black and Hispanic officers relative to Black and Hispanic enlisted troops.

Black troops made up 19% of enlisted active-duty service members in 2022 but only 9% of officers, according to data from the Pentagon.

The briefs quote service members of color recounting instances of racism they say they experienced, including offensive language and apparently disparate treatment in the military justice system.

Retired Army Col. Annette Tucker Osborne, president of the National Association of Black Military Women, says in the briefs that when her new commander on a deployment to Kuwait met her for the first time, he looked at her and back at her resume, over and over and over. In Tucker Osborne’s view, the commander was “unable to equate a Black woman with the well-polished and extremely qualified person on paper.”

“I was asked three times, ‘Did you complete Army War College?” she said in a Friday interview with Military Times. “I told you the first time. You didn’t have to ask me three times in front of the whole group of military personnel.”

On that six-month deployment, young white soldiers often wouldn’t salute Tucker Osborne, a full-bird colonel, she said.

Founded in 1976, the National Association of Black Military Women is an organization “dedicated to giving voice to Black military women across the nation.”

The association’s briefs argue racially diverse leaders can foster a better culture for more junior service members of color.

The U.S. Military Academy maintained in a court filing that affirmative action, by increasing racial diversity in the officer corps, also prevents internal racial tensions, boosts recruitment and retention, and builds the military’s legitimacy in the eyes of the nation and the globe.

Students for Fair Admissions has argued the opposite: that considering race in admissions undermines the internal and external trust in the military and amounts to racial stereotyping.

“America’s enemies do not fight differently based on the race of the commanding officer opposing them, soldiers must follow orders without regard to the skin color of those giving them, and battlefield realities apply equally to all soldiers regardless of race, ethnicity, or national origin,” the group wrote in a September filing.

And because race helps some applicants, race necessarily hurts other applicants, Students for Fair Admissions argued.

“That’s illegal,” the group wrote.

The service academies’ admissions officers insisted in court filings that race isn’t the determinative factor in deciding whether to admit or deny students.

To get accepted to the academies, applicants must not only meet the academic and physical standards but also receive official nominations, often from members of Congress.

Race can help students get letters of assurance, early conditional acceptances for “outstanding” applicants, according to the admissions officers. It could play a role in the academy’s decision to provide its handful of direct nominations, though those are typically reserved for standout athletes. And it can be a “plus factor” in final admissions decisions.

Students for Fair Admissions wrote that the academies should pursue race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action. The group described affirmative action as “racial box-checking” and “racial pseudoscience” because it relies on broad racial classifications like “Hispanic” and “Asian” that encompass a huge variety of ethnic backgrounds.

Nearly 19% of the military’s active duty officers are service academy grads, but that percentage falls to approximately 13% for Black officers, according to Pentagon data from 2019. ROTC programs at civilian universities are the leading source of officers’ commissions overall.

Next steps

Students for Fair Admissions is seeking preliminary injunctions that would order the Army’s and Navy’s service academies to cease using race as a factor in admissions immediately.

For that to happen, Judge Philip Halpern in New York and Judge Richard Bennett in Maryland would have to decide that Students for Fair Admissions’ arguments should win on the merits, and that waiting for the typical legal process to run its course would create harm that couldn’t be repaired.

Students for Fair Admissions, which is representing two anonymous white high schoolers who would like to apply to West Point, has said the judges need to act now. One of those students is applying in this admissions cycle and might miss out on a spot that he would have gotten if he weren’t white, the group argued in the complaint.

“Unless West Point is ordered to stop using race as a factor in admissions, [his] race will prevent him from competing for admission on an equal footing,” Students for Fair Admissions wrote.

Lawyers for Students for Fair Admissions didn’t respond to a Military Times request for an interview.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Justice Department’s Civil Division are representing the academies. Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the New York office, declined to comment. The Civil Division didn’t respond by time of publication to a Military Times request for comment.

Whether or not the judges decide to end affirmative action in the academies immediately, it’s likely those decisions will get appealed, Sarah Hinger, an ACLU attorney who worked on the amicus briefs, told Military Times on Thursday.

The cases likely will one day end up before the Supreme Court, in Hinger’s view.

Although six of the nine Supreme Court justices voted in June to scrap affirmative action in civilian universities, the service academy cases would force them to balance a desire to enforce equal protection consistently with the norm of courts deferring to the military, Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor, wrote in Bloomberg in September.

“It’s likely to be a close call, but consider: If there had been five firm votes on the court for striking down the military’s use of affirmative action, there would have been no need for Roberts to exclude the academies from June’s decision,” Feldman wrote.

The case in the Southern District of New York is Students for Fair Admissions v. United States Military Academy at West Point et al (7:23-cv-08262).

The case in the District of Maryland is Students for Fair Admissions v. The United States Naval Academy et al (1:23-cv-02699).

He had a family legacy of service in the Marine Corps, including an uncle and a cousin who were killed in action. He had grown up seeing the iconic images of the wars in the Middle East, with Marines bearing rifles, doing tough work.

But for the former U.S. Naval Academy football team offensive guard, there also was the yearning for a challenge. The sense that he could use his experience in a combative sport for a greater purpose.

“The Marine Corps brand is not welcoming, which is perhaps the most charming thing about it,” said West, who is currently stationed at Marine Barracks Washington. “They’re not interested in you. It’s, ‘Can you keep up?’”

Each year, a strikingly large portion of the Naval Academy’s football team decides to answer that question and pursue the Marine officer route.

Since 2014, 46% of the players have become Marines, according to academy spokesman Scott Strasemeier. That’s compared to only 25% to 30% of Naval Academy midshipmen overall.

In November, 10 out of the 25 football players in the Class of 2024 received Marine Corps assignments, according to Strasemeier.

West, a 2017 Naval Academy graduate, said the football players, himself included, tend to be drawn to the higher physical and other standards of the Marine Corps, though he noted has great respect for the Navy and the people who join the service.

Football’s high-contact nature has something in common with the Marine ethos, West said — in particular the infantry, where several of his teammates ended up.

“I don’t want to compare football to real-life combat operations, but if you’re a football player who’s trained to think that way and use your skills in that way, it turns out a lot of the Marine Corps’ mission is hands-on, imposing your will on someone directly,” West said.

The message then-Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo had for his players also aligned with Marine Corps culture, according to West: Be disciplined, be detail-oriented, and find a way to win.

In West’s view, the team’s legacy of Marine Corps service is another reason many of the players are inspired to trade in their cleats for eagle, globe and anchor pins.

There was 1st Lt. Ronald Winchester, who was killed in Iraq in September 2004. There was 2nd Lt. J.P. Blecksmith, killed in Iraq in November 2004.

There was Brian Stann, who earned the Silver Star Medal for the valor he showed as a second lieutenant in Iraq in May 2005.

There was retired Capt. Bryce McDonald, who returned to the team as a coach after surviving an improvised explosive device flipping his Humvee in Iraq in 2006, as the Los Angeles Times reported.

Four of the team’s current staff members are Naval Academy grads who became Marines, according to Strasemeier.

The large number of future Marines on the team is sometimes obvious at a glance, West said.

On Nov. 19, 2016, days before the football team played East Carolina University, the academy’s seniors received their service assignments. That meant West and other soon-to-be Marines had to get their heads shaved, as a traditional rite of passage.

When the dress-uniform-clad midshipmen arrived in North Carolina, half of them were sporting freshly razor-shorn heads.

The intimidation factor was high, West recalled.

“The ECU fans were amused to see midshipmen players arriving in uniform but became a little bit unsettled at the sight of the Marine selects with bald heads offloading the buses,” West said.

The Midshipmen beat East Carolina that day, 66–31.

“You may not hear this a lot, but kids have something important to teach us grownups, especially military kids like you,” Jill Biden said. “You teach us how to be brave, even when we’re scared. You teach us how to make friends, even when we don’t know anyone. And you teach us how to reach out a hand to other people in need.”

It was the first year Biden has hosted her annual Toys for Tots event at the White House rather than at a local military base. It’s a longstanding tradition for first ladies to hold events with Toys for Tots around the holidays.

Biden, herself the daughter of a World War II Navy veteran, has made supporting military families one of her priorities as first lady.

Before her remarks, the children had the opportunity to skate on a small ice rink on the White House’s South Lawn. A few Marines clad in dress blues, with ice skates rather than corfam shoes, joined their kids.

Some kids appeared excited to meet another celebrity in attendance: Gunny Bear, the larger-than-life teddy bear Toys for Tots mascot who was generous with high-fives.

Following Biden’s speech, the children sorted presents for Toys for Tots.

Since 1947, Toys for Tots has distributed 652 million toys to 291 million children, according to its website.

Biden said the program brings “magic, wonder and joy to children in need.”

Marine Reserve Maj. Bill Hendricks came up with Toys for Tots in 1947 after his wife, Diane, told him she wanted to donate handcrafted dolls to an agency that would give them to children in need, according to the program’s website.

No such agency existed, so Hendricks and the Marines in his Reserve unit collected and distributed 5,000 toys themselves that year.

Toys for Tots became a nationwide Marine Corps Reserve project the following year.

Retired Marine Corps Col. Ted Silvester, vice president for marketing and development for Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, recently said there is much want in 2023, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

“The need is significant,” he said in a news release. “We’re getting a lot of requests to all of our chapters.”

Veteran Lance Cpl. Joel David Beal had been fighting for Ukraine with the volunteer group Chosen Company since February or March, company commander Ryan O’Leary told Marine Corps Times on Nov. 24.

While fighting in Pervomais’ke in Donetsk Oblast, Beal was hit by a mortar round after jumping out of his trench in an attempt to destroy a Russian infantry vehicle that was attacking his comrades, O’Leary said.

“He was just fearless,” O’Leary said.

In response to a Marine Corps Times query about whether Beal had been killed in Ukraine, a State Department spokesperson on Nov. 22 confirmed the death of a U.S. citizen in Ukraine on Oct. 12 but declined to provide more details, out of respect for the family’s privacy.

Beal served in the Marine Corps from 2006–2010, leaving as a lance corporal, according to information provided by Corps spokeswoman Yvonne Carlock.

A rifleman, he deployed to Iraq from June 2008 to October 2008. His awards included the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon (twice), Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and National Defense Service Medal.

His final duty assignment was 1st Intelligence Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California.

Beal’s death was first reported by Task & Purpose. Marine Corps Times could not get in touch with Beal’s family.

In Chosen Company, Beal’s callsign was Gander, though O’Leary said he doesn’t know the origin of the name. Beal was close with fellow Marine veteran Lance Lawrence, who was killed in July, according to O’Leary.

Beal volunteered for every mission, O’Leary said. On one mission, when Beal was the driver of his team’s Humvee, he noticed one of his teammates had dropped a 40 mm grenade launcher near the Russian position.

Beal dismounted the Humvee and circled to the other side of it while shooting at the Russian position, according to O’Leary. The Marine veteran picked up the grenade launcher and lobbed rounds at the Russian fighters as he returned to the driver’s side, “and then just drove off like it was nothing,” O’Leary said.

“He had conviction in what he was doing, and he lived through that conviction,” O’Leary said.

Beal is at least the seventh U.S. Marine veteran killed in the war in Ukraine.

Other Marine veterans known to have died in the war are Lawrence; Ian Frank Tortorici, 32, killed in June; Cooper “Harris” Andrews, 26, killed in April; Pete Reed, 33, killed in February; and Grady Kurpasi, 50, and Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, each killed in April 2022.