Oregon soldier, and his family, ponder meaning of sacrifice

04/27/2006 Ed Langlois

Last December, Marine Cpl. Joe Morris and his father Tony stopped in San Francisco for a night. They jogged across the Golden Gate Bridge and rested at a monument recognizing sailors and soldiers who had passed through the strait on their way to war.

Joe would be taking a voyage to Iraq a few months later. At boot camp, he had seen a fellow Marine commit suicide and was wondering how he would deal with seeing so much death overseas.

The 48-year-old father and 20-year-old son discussed what it means to be in harm’s way and put oneself on the line for a cause. In the car with them, bound for Oregon, was the ultimate symbol of self-sacrifice — a six-foot-tall crucifix.

The two had trekked to Tijuana, Mexico, to buy a sculpted figure of the executed savior. Later, they made a cross using Oregon Douglas fir and affixed the corpus to the beams.

Now that Joe is in Iraq, and Tony sees the cross every day hanging in the chapel at the Father Bernard Youth Center in Mount Angel, the idea of putting a life at the service of others is almost too real.

He is proud, but worries about Joe all the time.

“War is war, you know?” says Tony, from his office as director of the Catholic youth center. “A young man has a romantic vision of war and how you respond for your country. That is all cool and good, but a parent who has lived a little bit knows what that means. You feel proud, but you deal with the reality that someday that phone call will be for you.”

Joe Morris entered the Marines in June 2003, two weeks after graduating from Regis High School in Stayton. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego and was deployed to Iraq in February of this year.

As might be expected, his spiritual life has gone into high drive. He has been reading Rick Warren’s bestseller The Purpose Driven Life.

“When I die, God will ask me two questions,” Joe wrote in a March 8 email to his father. “What did I do for His Son? And what did I do with what He gave me?”

On Monday of Holy Week, the day after he worked an intense 10-hour shift (made longer because his replacement overslept two hours), Joe wrote to his mother.

His tired fingers felt like “wet noodles flapping all over the place,” he explained.

“Hey mom, the last couple days have been nuts. My Palm Sunday was alright, however I did not make it to church. But I did read my Lenten book and it was really good. I read a really appropriate chapter about struggles in life and how to find Christ in them. I got some packages in the mail today, so that was nice. Kiss.”

Joe works in a regiment combat operations center in battered Fallujah, running a computer program used to create boundaries and track troops in the field.

He is in the midst of violence. On his first day, his convoy was hit by a roadway bomb. There was but a single vehicle between him and the explosion. He phoned his father during the wait, and Tony could hear gunfire in the background.

Joe’s resolve was tested last week, when one of his buddies was killed — a young Marine whose wife had just given birth. Why hadn’t one of us single guys been hit instead? Joe wondered.

Though the drudgery and horror of war has set in, Joe still believes deeply in the cause. Here is how he signed off a recent email to his family — “I have lives to save and freedom to defend, so I need to go.”

Before he joined up, Joe sported long hair and a somewhat wild attitude. He was not a war hawk. He supported Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, a candidate who criticized the way the war was being run.

On April 2, his 21st birthday, in the middle of a battle, Joe sent a letter home that included $650 to help pay off the bill for the crucifix.

The donation was a big chunk of his income. Cpl. Morris usually uses about $150 per month of his pay, putting the rest into a college fund that the Marine Corps matches.

This is a 21st-century war, so Joe is not out of touch. He sends an email most days and calls often. But the closeness is illusory, as is the notion that parents can keep their soldier-children safe.

When a Marine is killed, all outgoing communication from Iraq gets shut down while officials seek to notify families. So, occasionally there is a lull in word.

That drives his family mad.

“I worry about him every day,” says Bernadette, his 24-year-old sister.

She considers her younger brother a role model.

“He is sacrificing his life,” she says. “Like Jesus, they sacrifice their lives.”

She was impressed at the donation he sent for the cross on the day he turned 21. “For my 21st birthday, I wasn’t thinking about what a youth center needs,” she says.

Tony and Susie Morris have six children ages 14 to 28. Joe is expected back in Oregon in June for some R and R.

The experience with his son has led Tony to plan retreats for soldiers returning home. The idea also got nudged along when an Oregon National Guard officer told Morris that the church is not doing enough for vets.

A retreat is set for the second week of August.

Tony is already spiritual director for some Iraq soldiers and knows that re-entry can be a hard go. He also remembers the struggles his Marine brother had when he returned from Vietnam.

“I don’t want that to happen to kids coming back from Iraq,” he says. “Now one of them is going to be my son.”