
BRIANS
SONG.WAVBrian Downard was 23 years old, a father, a country
music fan, and a corporal of Marines. He joined the Marine Corps in
July of 2005, and would do two deployments to two different scenic
locales. The first was to Iraq, where he served from November of
’06 to April of the following year. While in Iraq, Brian suffered a
concussion from an IED strike while patrolling. Undeterred, Brian
stayed in the Marines and deployed to Burma in 2008 when Marines
and sailors with the Essex Amphibious Readiness Group provided
humanitarian assistance operations to aid the cyclone-stricken
country. He would eventually leave the service just last July,
after four honorable years of service. One month after separation,
he discovered that he had testicular cancer, and a very aggressive
strain at that. The cancer spread quickly to his muscles and fatty
tissues, and Brian suffered so greatly with the pain that they put
him on morphine. He was released from the VA to enjoy his last days
with the love from his mom and his 7-year-old son Jesse. In the
past month, Brian’s health was fading rather rapidly. He had two
final wishes: he wanted to meet his favorite musician, country
music star Clay Walker, and he wanted to be buried next to his
grandparents in the Washington Park East cemetery in Indianapolis.
The American Legion is setting up a fundraiser for Brian. Here is
the link for Credit Card donations:
https://www.members.legion.org/CGI-BIN/lansaweb?webapp=TALFUNDR+webrtn=WR_donorinfo+ml=LANSA:XHTML+part=tal+lang=ENG+f(trantype)=BDM
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