Mick R Bekowsky

A world away from his little sister, Mick R. Bekowsky sounded tired and homesick in calls home from Iraq, but he always asked Haley, 12, how her softball team was doing. "They were eight years apart and had two different lives," Brian Bekowsky said of his children. "They both thought they'd have plenty of time to be brother and sister." The 21-year-old assaultman from Concord, Calif., was killed Sept. 6 by a car bomb in Iraq's Anbar province. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton. The Marine liked to race cars, hunt and fish. His father said he wanted to be "the life of the party." "He was a macho 21-year-old boy who thought he was immortal," said his mother, Joan Bekowsky. Bekowsky enlisted a month after the Sept. 11 terror...