Gardner's voice breaks as he recalls that parting conversation, a goodbye said through a bus window last winter at a Southern California Marine base. His son, 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Derek Gardner, was killed in a suicide car bomb attack last month – three weeks before he was due home.
The father, a third-generation combat veteran, is still proud of his son. But he no longer supports the war. He doesn't want other families to experience the same paralyzing grief that deprives him of sleep or prompts him to break down sobbing.
"I want all our Marines to come home ... Let's just get out of there," Gardner said in an interview at his Orange County home, where he surrounds himself with photos of Derek and even hangs his son's combat fatigues on a wall near the television for company.
In changing his opinion of the war, Gardner joins a growing list of people who have lost family members in Iraq and have become poignant opponents of the invasion. Some actively support John Kerry over President Bush; others, such as Gardner, find politics beside the point.
"I'm not a Bush fan or a Kerry fan. I'm nobody's fan except my son. He is my hero," said Gardner, 54, a hulking former ironworker on disability from his job at a cable company.
When the war started, the families of those killed in action seemed invariably to say they found comfort that their loved ones died for a good cause. Most continue to express that view, but it's no longer the automatic response.
There is the Ohio father who posted a sign outside his home with the message "Thanks Mr. Bush for the death of our son," and the bereaved New Jersey mother detained for interrupting a speech by first lady Laura Bush. In Minnesota, relatives of a dead Marine protested outside an appearance by Vice President Dick Cheney. An August poll by Quinnipiac University found that a majority of voters from military families in Pennsylvania said the war was wrong.
One of them is Christine Weismantle, a Pittsburgh nurse whose husband was killed in Baghdad a year ago. She no longer feels the invasion was worth the cost in casualties – but she also worries her criticism could hurt troop morale.
"We should still support the troops and what they're doing. They're not the ones calling the shots," said Weismantle, 28, who plans to vote Nov. 2 for the first time ever. Her criteria for presidential candidate: who will end the war soonest.
Still, she is not a political activist.
Weismantle said she won't attend any demonstrations or join Military Families Speak Out, a group of relatives of active duty personnel opposed to the war that has signed up about 1,700 members since it formed in November 2002.
"The worst thing that could ever happen to me happened," Weismantle said. "It takes all my energy just to go to work."
Gardner faces the same paralyzing grief.
He walked out of a restaurant crying at the sight of a newspaper photo of returning Marines. One night when he again couldn't sleep, Gardner wrote a lengthy essay about his son's death, detailing what he says was the military's failure to protect Derek's convoy from attack.
He has asked military officials why the convoy had no air support, leaving it exposed to the suicide bomb attack that also killed six other Marines. Gardner, who guarded convoys as a Marine in Vietnam, says he hasn't gotten a satisfactory answer.
"They had a plan A to get rid of Saddam, but they had no plan B, what was going to happen after Saddam," he said bitterly.
But Gardner is no war protester.
His only public commentary is the tattoo he got after his son's death: "My Son. My Bud. My Friend. My Marine." It closes with the Marine Corps motto, semper fi, Latin for always faithful.
Far more outspoken is his son's mother – the couple divorced in 1991 but remain on friendly terms.
Vickey de Lacour, 49, said she always had mixed feelings about the war but kept them to herself because Derek Gardner seemed to love the Marine Corps. He was so eager to enlist like his father, she recalls, that he began preparing for boot camp while still a high school senior.
De Lacour stifled her rising anger about the war at her son's funeral out of deference to the troops. Now, her rage flows.
"The American people have to know the truth about what's going on," she said.
From her purse, de Lacour removed a copy of the Sept. 11 Commission report and slammed it down to emphasize that Saddam was not linked to the terror attacks.
"He died for nothing," De Lacour said, sobbing as she collapsed into a chair at her ex-husband's house.
Gardner said he hasn't decided how to vote on Nov. 2 – he has trouble even focusing on the question. He spends much of his day like a lost man, hobbling around his home and cradles his son's Jack Russell terrier.
"Every day just seems to get worse," he said. "I just wish it were me instead of him."
By Ben Fox ASSOCIATED PRESS 9:50 a.m. October 31, 2004
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