Marina Beyer, an Alamo resident, shared a letter she wrote last week. It begins, “Hey Erick,” and continues on in a light, conversational tone to tell her son Erick Hodges remembrances of him, growing up and, more recently, as a Marine.
The letter painted a picture of a fun-loving, precocious child, born two weeks early, on her own birthday. “I always think about the time when the neighbor called, saying, ‘Do you know what your kids are doing now?’ She said you guys were trick or treating. It was July.”
She wrote about him joining the Marines even before he had graduated from Mt. Diablo High School, and how during high school ROTC he grew his hair quite long but kept it tucked under his hat. He also attended San Ramon Valley High for a while.
And she wrote about his impressions of Iraq. “I remember you saying, ‘The best thing about Iraq is the people, especially the kids, and how they love and treated the Marines like royalty.’ She talked about the Iraqi boy Erick nicknamed Ali Pacino because of the hat he wore when he came to sell sodas to the Marines. “And that one letter you sent, where you had escorted an archeologist to a site and they found ancient tablets. And you wrote that ‘this is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.'”
Lance Cpl. Erick Hodges had a lot of experiences in his lifetime, but it was cut short Nov. 10, 2004, one day after he turned 21. He was killed in the northwestern part of Fallujah, in a Marine attack against an enemy outpost that had begun two days before.
Marina wrote the letter for a DVD produced for a project called “Stories of the Fallen, told by their families,” by the Silicon Valley Digital Clubhouse Network. This nonprofit group is working with families who have lost sons in Iraq to produce DVDs about them, to give voice to their loss. The DVDs are put on their Web site and ultimately will be sent to the Smithsonian Institute, Marina said. In the five-minute DVD, she reads her letter while photos she selected show on the screen, beginning with one of her as a young mother in a field of flowers and Erick running along happily ahead of her. She also picked out the music.
Erick was the second of her six children. The two youngest boys, Dustin and Dylan, go to San Ramon Valley High and Stone Valley Middle School. She works at Longs Drugs, within walking distance of her home. She said customers who know of her loss often just come up and give her a hug.
She traveled to Camp Pendleton when a special service was held for the 19 men in the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment who were killed on the same tour as Erick. It was his second deployment. The survivors of his fire team talked to her of his last days, which she appreciated. She also has talked to the family of the Marine who carried Erick’s body away from the site where he was killed; this Marine himself was killed one month later.
Marina is being honored tomorrow at a luncheon from 12:30-2:30 p.m. given by the Healing Place Church women at the Danville Grange on Diablo Road. The event is “A Live Makeover Show,” with experts in hair, makeup and fashion, and they chose Marina to receive the works. Tickets will be available at the door for $20, said organizer Brianna Read, who explained the church’s mission is to be a healing place for a hurting world – hence the name. Besides the makeover for Marina, they are sending gift boxes to Erick’s unit.
Erick was always so self-sufficient and self-assured that Marina said she really never worried about him. He was gone so much in the last three years of his life and he always returned – so it still seems like he should be coming home or calling. Time is said to heal wounds, Marina noted, but so far it hasn’t helped. “I miss him even more,” she said.
Marina didn’t know how to begin to write about him for the DVD until she thought of composing the letter. “I wanted to put something of Erick’s humor in it,” she said. “A lot of the DVD’s are so sad.” The recording session for several families was last weekend at the History Center in San Jose, and she found the young technicians professional and helpful. She is happy with how the letter turned out. But, she said, tears welling in her eyes, “It’s hard to realize Erick’s not going to be reading it.” •
