Wall St. analyst, Iraq casualty

HAVERHILL -- Called by a sense of duty following the World Trade Center attacks, Dimitrios Gavriel left behind his career as a Wall Street analyst, joined the Marines, and shipped out to Iraq. There he went to the front lines as a lance corporal a decade older than most of his comrades.

Last week, Gavriel, 29, was killed in fierce fighting in Fallujah.

Two weeks before his death on Nov. 18, the Haverhill man told reporters he was ''locked, cocked, and ready to rock" for the coming urban battle. Today, he is mourned, a former New Hampshire high school wrestling champion and a Brown University graduate who wrote poetry and coached children in New York.

Gavriel's death in combat was the tragedy his family feared, but a sacrifice he was willing to make.

''He knew there was more to life than getting a job and making a living," his father, Chris, said yesterday, sobbing on the living room couch. ''Our only consolation is that he went for a noble cause."

Surrounded by photographs, poems, and a journal their son left behind, the Gavriels described him as a thoughtful and responsible man whose unwavering obligation to what he believed was right had overwhelmed their pleas for him to stay home, safe.

His mother, Penelope, recalled that she picked up the local newspapers and read aloud the names of fallen soldiers.

''Look at these kids. Do you want to end up like them?" she told her son. ''He would say: 'Mom, look at the odds. How many went, and how many got killed?' "

So, he went, she said.

Before joining the Marines in October 2003, Gavriel was an ambitious Wall Street analyst, working at major companies such as J.P. Morgan and Bank of America. He spent his weekends in the Bronx, volunteering as a wrestling coach at high schools.

But when Gavriel attended the memorial services of at least two friends who had died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ''it really affected him emotionally," Chris Gavriel said.

''My son wasn't seeking vengeance," his father said. ''He wanted to prove himself."

Gavriel, a state wrestling champion and honor student from Timberlane Regional High School in Plaistow, N.H., had the college credentials to go to the Marines' Officer Candidates School. But instead, his family said, Gavriel was determined to go to boot camp with the rank and file and dropped his weight from 270 to 225 pounds.

''He knew better than all of us what he wanted, and he knew the risks," his father said. ''I'm afraid to say it, but I could not fill his shoes. He was beyond me."

Gavriel, who had been based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., was serving with the First Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment, Second Marine Division, Second Marine Expeditionary Force. The Marine units spearheaded the assault on Fallujah.

His family learned that Gavriel was on the front lines only three weeks ago. ''He was worried about getting his parents upset, so he never told them he was a rifleman," Maria Synodinos said of her cousin. ''He wanted to spare them the pain."

On Friday evening, four uniformed military officers knocked on the family's flag-draped door. As soon as she saw them, Penelope Gavriel said, she knew.

''Is he gone?" the mother whispered.

''Yes, ma'am," an officer responded.

Penelope and Chris Gavriel have nothing but pride for their son, whose body arrived in Dover, Del., yesterday afternoon. Gavriel is expected to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Plans for a memorial service in Haverhill have not been completed, family members said.

A scholarship fund in his name has been set up at Timberlane Regional High School, 36 Greenough Road, Plaistow, N.H., 03865.

A lover of books, the soft-spoken Gavriel kept a series of journals and poems. They are now sitting on his parents' coffee table. With each flip of the page, family members said, they learn something new and powerful about him. They said they are waiting for the scores of journals and poetry Dimitrios kept in Iraq.

''This is the first journal I ever kept," Gavriel wrote in one entry in block letters. ''I heard great men kept journals. . . . I'd like to be great."

Nervously gripping a small piece of paper with one of his son's poems, Chris Gavriel read it aloud:

''Hope lives among so few, yet strong it is I know," he said, forcing out the words through tears. ''For I am still a dreamer, along the track I go."

Megan Tench can be reached at mtench@globe.com.