XtremeJibber2001 wrote:DMC Freeride wrote:XtremeJibber2001 wrote:DMC Freeride wrote:XtremeJibber2001 wrote:
Saying my future sucks because wars will happen and saying my future sucks because I want war is two different things. I want what you want, but it's not practical, the inevitable, is war.
I'm still holding out for peace...
And I think it's going to happen someday..
As am I, but if it doesn't work out, my life won't suck.
dude... We are at war and it sucks... maybe not for you but it sucks for our country... on so many levels...
I really hope your life doesnt suck... But living with blinders on while people die every damn day sucks in my opinion...
I think about the boys over there and my friends each and every day. I hope they can get home soon and get home safe. We've had interesting debates and at times we disagree.
I don't live with blinders on. I merely acknowledge that war has made what the World is today and it will continue to change the world in the future. I'm here supporting the troops no matter what the conflict and I also enjoy engaging in the benefits, problems, lies, etc about any way.
However, just because I engage in debate about the war doesn't make my life suck. I'm not doom and gloom, I accept what's going on around me and try to make myself as knowledgable as possible.
Want to see people with blinders on....come to my school.
Blinders on? I tried that...here's one who didn't come home safe.
Hey Big K - forget the ballpeen...I'm beyond that now...
I can't argue the merits of this war on the facts...I'm too close to it...
I refused to read this last night...read it today...this kid is from my town...until his fifth grade year, he went to the same Catholic school as my kids...I really hate Rumsfeld...
PELHAM -- Honor, humor and huge hugs.
Those were just three of the qualities Spc. Daniel Gionet carried with him and shared readily with others throughout his life, according to family and friends.
Gionet, a 23-year-old Lowell native, a 2001 graduate of Pelham High School and a soldier, died over the weekend in Taji, a rural area on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device blew up near his tank, according to his family. He was a medic with the Army's 4th Infantry division.
After joining the Army in 2001, he re-enlisted when his hitch was up in May 2004.
"He was my angel," said his mother, Denise, yesterday.
Family, neighbors and friends were beginning to gather at the house she shares with her parents on Gumpus Hill Road. On Sunday night, the Army sent a soldier to her door to break the news that her oldest boy had died serving his country.
Daniel's grandparents, Ernest and Theresa Trepanier, kept asking the soldier, "Are you sure? Are you sure it's him?"
Yes, he said, we are sure.
Last Nov. 26, Daniel got married. "Before he went back over, just in case ... something happened to him," said his grandmother, who remembers Daniel's "great hugs."
"He'd just bundle you up in his arms."
He couldn't have been more sure of his choice of a wife, Katrina. How much did he love her?
This is the message on his cell phone: "If this is Katrina, you are the love of my life."
He left a little space for everyone else.
"If it's not Katrina, you know who you called. Leave a message."
They met on a blind date, and "he fell in love right away," said Debbie Madigan, Daniel's godmother.
Katrina is majoring in mathematics at State University College at Oswego in New York. She was accepted to transfer to UMass Lowell in the fall.
A year ago, when Daniel proposed to Katrina, he rented a carriage and they rode around Boston. He popped the question, then the freshly engaged couple went to see a performance of Phantom of the Opera.
He had their whole life planned out, said his family. They married, he would finish his duty in Iraq. Katrina would finish school. She would work while he went to school. They'd buy a home and have children.
In addition to his mother and grandparents, Gionet leaves behind his father, Daniel, who lives in Lowell, a brother, Darren, 20, and a sister, Alycia, 18.
At Pelham High School, Daniel wrestled, and played football and baseball. He was presented the school's sportsmanship award.
He loved his Volkswagen Jetta but planned to buy his wife a funkier-looking car.
"When I get out, she gets a Cooper," he would say.
He loved to fish. A large photograph in the family room shows a beaming Gionet holding up a huge fish, caught in Maine. Up in the corner of the room, just above a box of tissues on the couch, hangs a photograph of Daniel taken just after basic training, looking every inch the tough soldier.
His grandfather was in the Air Force in Korea, his father a Marine.
"It's the kind of thing you hear about, you see on TV," said Daniel's grandfather. '"But you just never think it'll happen to your family."
On Saturday, Daniel called home to Pelham from Iraq for the last time. He told his grandmother everything was fine. She said a care package was on the way. It had some of those healthy fruit bars he liked. (One of the few things he hated in life was the Army's MRE's, or "meals ready to eat.") And some beef jerky. They didn't tell him about the tollhouse cookies. They wanted at least that part of the package to be a surprise. His niece made a huge tollhouse cookie in the shape of a heart.
He told his family not to worry about him. He was safe. The Army had cut his patrol time from 36-hour shifts to 12-hour stretches. He was "very pleased" with that, said his mother.
"I'm OK, Memere," he told his grandmother.
"I'm safe, Mom," he told Denise Gionet. "I'm in a tank where nothing can penetrate."
Gionet was due to return home next month for a 15-day leave.
Daniel attended St. Jeanne D'Arc School in Lowell until the fifth grade, then moved to Pelham with his mother when his parents divorced.
But he never lost touch with Ashley, the girl he'd known since he grew up on Lisa Lane in Lowell. She was a year younger and lived a street away. She remembers yelling out her bedroom window to him while he waited at the bus stop. The two were like brother and sister, best friends.
She's Ashley Gelinas, married to Gregg Gelinas since Nov. 2, 2004.
Back in Lowell, she was Ashley Treadlow.
"People always thought we'd be the ones to get married," she says of Daniel. "We were so close."
Daniel served as best man at Gregg and Ashley's wedding.
"I met him seven-and-a-half, eight years ago," said Gregg. "Just a great guy. We spent time together fixing up cars, goofing around. Being crazy people."
Gregg told Daniel he was going to propose to Ashley on a specific day. Daniel promised he would keep the secret.
The day before, at Old Orchard Beach, she cornered Daniel. She told him how much she loved Gregg.
"They talked for hours over by the lifeguard stand," said Gregg. "And Danny never let on."
When Daniel debated re-enlisting in the Army, Ashley didn't discourage him.
"I supported him 100 percent in whatever he wanted to do," said Ashley, who, like her husband is a firefighter in Auburn, N.H.
"He died doing what he loved," she added.
Daniel talked about being a firefighter or paramedic when he left the service, she said.
Gionet figured the Army would pay for college later. He joined before Sept. 11, 2001, and trained at Fort Drum in upstate New York, deploying to Afghanistan. He served there, based at Kandahar Air Field, cooking for troops.
He re-enlisted after his original duty ended in May 2004, to become a medic.
"I can't just be a cook," he told Gregg Gelinas. "I need to help people."
He headed for Fort Sam Houston in Texas for five months training, then was based out of Fort Hood, where he joined the 4th Infantry and shipped to Iraq.
His grandmother asked him once why he decided to sign up for the Army.
"Memere, somebody's gotta do it. And I'm the guy for it," she remembers him saying.
"He was just starting his life," said Madigan, his godmother. "He was so happy and had found his love."
In April 2002, Denise Gionet wrote a poem called "My First Born Son." it is 11 stanzas long. This is the sixth stanza.
But oh, how I miss my first-born son
But until this war of terrorism is done
I will loan my boy to my country, my land
And pray God will hold him in the palm of His hand.
David Perry's e-mail address is
dperry@lowellsun.com.
DANIEL GIONET
BORN: Lowell, Jan. 2, 1983
AGE: 23
MILITARY: Medic, Army 4th Infantry
FAMILY: Wife, Katrina, a college student in New York. Married Nov. 26, 2005. Mother, Denise Gionet, Pelham. Father, Daniel Gionet, Lowell. Brother, Darren, 20. Sister, Alycia, 18. Grandparents, Ernest and Theresa Trepanier, Pelham
EDUCATION: 2001 graduate, Pelham High School. On wrestling, baseball and football teams. Winner, sportsmanship award.
IRAQ WAR CASUALTIES
U.S. FATALITIES: 2,478
TOTAL U.S. CASUALTIES: 17,869
SERIOUS CASUALTIES: 8,386
MASS. FATALITIES: 37
