PORT ANGELES — Holding flags and holding back tears, they stood on overpasses, street corners and impromptu roadside vigils along U.S. Highway 101.
They gathered Tuesday to honor Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jason Hanson, 21, of Forks, who was killed July 29 while on patrol in Anbar province in Iraq.
Hundreds turned out to watch the somber procession from the Clallam-Jefferson county line to Port Angeles.
Yellow ribbons and mourning
Neil and Cecelia Schouten of Sequim brought their three visiting granddaughters to pay their respects from the South Sequim Avenue overpass.
“We want them to see what it’s all about,” Cecelia said.
Hanson’s body was driven in a hearse, with police escorts accompanied by a Marine honor guard and trailed by a procession of motorcyclists.
The procession ended at Harper-Ridgeview Funeral Chapel in Port Angeles.
Staff Sgt. Rick Larsen, an Army National Guard recruiter, helped tie yellow ribbons on the overpass.
“He’s a local boy, and there’s not enough troop support as there is,” Larsen said.
“His family needs to know that our hearts and prayers go to him.”
Max McCaleb stood with the others on the overpass with a small U.S. flag tucked into his shirt.
A former Marine with a 24-year-old son serving a second tour as a civilian firefighter in Iraq, McCaleb said he came to honor a fellow Marine, but he has issues with the war and President Bush.
“For me, he died for a cause he had no business dying for,” McCaleb said.
“We’ve lost a lot of good ones over there.”
Hanson was a rifleman in the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion based in Twentynine Palms, Calif.
He died when a gasoline truck near a building he was in exploded, causing the building to collapse, his family reported.
Three other Marines were killed in the explosion.
The 2003 Forks High School graduate joined the Marines in May 2005 and left for Iraq last March.
He had just married Maria Farias in Forks before he deployed.
