Memories of the fallen

ON THIS Memorial Day, when Americans are dying one by one in Iraq, their personalities and their courage stand out with a sorrowful vividness. Six times this month, a Massachusetts man was buried, with hundreds of mourners in attendance, including Governor Deval Patrick, who represented the collective grief of the state.

Marine Sergeant William Callahan of Easton was remembered as the glue that held his family together. His son had been born just 28 days before. Shortly before Callahan died in Anbar Province, he heard his son's first cries over the phone. "He would have made a heck of a dad," said his aunt.

And 400 people mourned Army Captain Anthony Palermo in Brockton. He was to be reunited in Germany with his wife, also an Army captain, for the birth of their first child, but he died when a bomb blew up his Humvee. He had wanted to join the Army ever since his service in the junior ROTC program at Brockton High School.

About 4,000 people stood in silence on the streets of Rockland as the hearse carrying the body of Lance Corporal Walter O'Haire passed by. He was killed in a firefight in Anbar. Before he shipped out to Iraq, he made sure to come up from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to visit his family. "Just to see us all he would drive through the night," said his uncle.

Thirty-three cadets from the Junior ROTC program at Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School were among the 600 at the funeral of a Westminster native, First Lieutenant Ryan Patrick Jones. An alumnus of the school, he had just written them about his experiences in Iraq. "He was one of those standout kids," his guidance counselor recalled. "That's how I started his college reference: 'Ryan Patrick Jones makes me smile.' " Jones, too, was killed by a roadside bomb.

At the funeral of Army Specialist Kyle Little, 300 people remembered the West Boylston man as a soldier who, after dropping out of high school, found his calling in the Army. "He was hand-selected for a security team," said a general in attendance. "He was . . . highly motivated, outstanding." Little, a Red Sox fan, had the team name tattooed on his arm. He was killed by an improvised bomb.

A thousand people mourned for First Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich of Walpole, killed by a suicide bomber. Son of an Army veteran and professor who opposed the war, he struggled to join the Army despite his asthma. After running the Boston Marathon, he signed up. "He could have gotten out of college and started making big money and living in places a lot nicer than Iraq," said a friend.

All six men were in their 20s, and left lives that cry out for completion. But they linger in the memories of all who knew them. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a Civil War veteran, said long ago: "I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth."