Randal Kent Rosacker
Profile
Age: 21
From: San Diego
Assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Incident: Marine Cpl. Randal Kent Rosacker was killed in action near Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Died: March 23, 2003
Rosacker was a talented high-school athlete who married his high school sweetheart and pursued his goals without fanfare.
He grew up in San Diego knowing he would join the Marine Corps. He even wrote essays in high school about his plans to become a Marine. That’s how his teachers and his father remember the 21-year-old.
“He didn’t go in much for publicity. He got talked about a lot as an athlete, but he just blew it off. He was on the wrestling team and played football and baseball,” said his father, Rod Rosacker, who lives in Bremerton, Wash. He’s a command master chief with the Navy aboard the ballistic missile submarine Alabama. He returned March 24 from three months at sea.
“We got the message from chaplains,” Rod Rosacker said. “I’ve been in the Gulf four times. He’d been over there 2 1/2 months. When I heard about the fighting there I was worried. It’s something you know can happen. You just hope it will never happen to...