In a world in which parents aren't supposed to bury their children, Yvonne Wells possesses a catalog of photographs that bookend the life of her son, Lonny.
Steve Mellon, Post-GazetteYvonne Wells of Vandergrift holds a copy of The New York Times which displayed a photograph of her son, Marine Sgt. Lonny D. Wells, shortly after he was fatally wounded in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. On Nov. 9, Wells was shot in the leg as his unit fought street-to-street. He was dead within minutes..
Click photo for larger image.
See other articles in this seriesTomorrow: An angry year comes to an end -- or does it? "This is from the hospital. When he was born," she said. It shows a dark-haired infant, hands fisted in reflex, squinting up from a bassinet at the hospital in Kittanning, on Jan. 10, 1975.
In the family's living room in Vandergrift, a small mill town that hugs the Kiskiminetas River on the Westmoreland-Armstrong line, Wells unfolds a newspaper to show the last photograph of her son. On Nov. 9, a photographer was on hand when Marine Sgt. Lonny D. Wells caught a bullet in his leg as his unit fought street-to-street in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. He was dead within minutes.
"Thirteen kids from Lonny's unit were killed," Yvonne Wells said.
Wells was a training sergeant in the Marines. From the time he played soldiers with other boys along Sherman Avenue, through the period after high school when he earned pocket money at the Burger King, he knew he would have a uniform on his back.
"I used to tell him, 'Lonny, why don't you try to be a model? You've got the looks.' He'd just say, 'Oh, Mom -- I'm gonna be a Marine."
On one of his last trips home to Vandergrift, Wells told his mother about the young men he'd trained for combat.
"After he trained these men to go over there and do what they had to do, he felt guilty," Yvonne Wells said. "He said 'Mom, these are my kids. I've got to go over there with them.' "
As the war in Iraq scratches its way to a second anniversary, Lonny D. Wells, 29, epitomizes the vividness with which the war is cutting into the heartland from which so many families send their sons to fight. Vandergrift sits in the middle of the Allegheny-Kiskiminetas Valley -- Alle-Kiski, the locals call it.
Frame houses, often on streets that wind with Byzantine patterns because of the combination of river and hill that dictated the locations of roads, hold families with long traditions, both blue-collar and military uniform. World War II and Vietnam veterans came home, worked the steel plants, then raised sons and daughters who often saw the military as the ticket to a career once the mills closed down.
Draw a circle 15 miles out from its center and assess the depths to which the Iraq war has reached into the Alle-Kiski region. In the space of 11 months, Wells and three other young men have died in Iraq:
William Sturges, 24, of Spring Church, Armstrong County, died Jan. 24, Pennsylvania's first casualty for 2004.Brad Coleman, 19, of Ford City, died May 29.Joshua Henry, 21, of Apollo, died Sept. 20.
A year earlier, in April 2003, Stevon Booker, 34, of Apollo, was killed in action.
Since the Iraq war began March 19, 2003, a total of 65 service members from Pennsylvania have died. Thirty-four of them fell this past year, and most of them came from the western half of the state.
They were men like Spc. Clint Richard Matthews, 31, of Bedford. The son of a Vietnam veteran, Matthews was in the Army Reserve when, angered by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he signed up for active duty. He was killed March 19, the first anniversary of the Iraq war, when a road collapsed beneath his armored vehicle and it tumbled into the Tigris River.
One-hundred-and-thirty-six American troops died in April. Three of them were from the Pittsburgh region: Staff Sgt. Edward Carman, 27, of McKeesport; Spc. Jonathan Roy Kephart, 21, of Oil City, Venango County; and Lance Cpl. Aric Barr, 22, of Hazelwood.
An enemy unwilling to distinguish between combatant and contractor also began to claim young men wearing no uniform. John N. Mallery, 28, a 1994 graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School, was working for a supply company when guerrilla fighters opened fire on his truck in the town of Taji, 30 miles north of Baghdad.
Some towns were doubly hit. Gunnery Sgt. Ronald Eric Baum, 38, died May 5. Sgt. Brandon Adams, 22, died Sept. 19. Both left behind friends and family in Hollidaysburg, Blair County.
In previous wars, it took hours, if not days, for film to return from the battlefield. In the first Gulf War, journalists were largely banned from the area of combat. When Lonny Wells fell, a contract photographer was on hand to shoot his final photograph, one in which he sprawls on a street in Fallujah and looks down at his leg as his artery bleeds out.
"I wanted a copy of the picture," Yvonne Wells said, holding up the newspaper in which it ran. "They charge $95 a photo and that's if they can obtain it."
Wells kept in touch by e-mail, something that largely did not exist the last time U.S. soldiers were at war. He told of sand and heat. He mentioned hearing about a friend moving to the town of East Vandergrift. He asked for Kool-Aid, hoping it would make the tepid water of Iraq drinkable.
He wrote telegraphically, with ellipses separating the sparse thoughts he tapped onto the screen:
"Everything here is going good ... still supposed to be back in January ... not too long ... time goes quick being so busy ... take care ... tell Bunzi I said hi."
Lonny Wells
Bunzi is John Lattanzi, Yvonne Wells' husband. His brother's son is in the Persian Gulf.
"He's up in Tikrit. Now he's going down to the battle zone where they're battling in Baghdad," Lattanzi said.
Among the families that have lost sons and daughters to the Iraq war there is, unsurprisingly, some ambivalence about what their loss should signify. Unprompted, Yvonne Wells volunteered the opinion that American should not have gone into Iraq.
"I don't think our boys should have been over there in the first place," she said. "My son thought it was political. My daughter thought it was political. My daughter's in the Army."
On the other side of the living room, John Lattanzi was less certain.
"I'd say myself we shouldn't be over there. That's 50 percent of it," he said. "The other half of it is people say we should, because the insurgents follow our soldiers where they are." Better, said Lattanzi, to fight the enemy on a battlefield of our choosing, and on streets that are not ours.
Lonny Wells left behind four children from three relationships. His youngest is a 10-month-old daughter. He left behind something else, as well. It's a slightly soiled Dallas Cowboys sweat shirt and his mother found it after he died.
"I talked to his wife and she was amazed," Yvonne Wells said. "She said he always had that with him. Every morning he'd go running in that sweat shirt." She held it out by the arms, displaying it like a relic.
"I haven't been able to bring myself to wash it yet," she said. "Someday I will."
Pennsylvanians reported killed in the Iraq war during 2004
Sturges, Army Spc. William Russell, 24, Spring Church (Armstrong County), Jan. 24.
Matthews, Army Spc. Clint Richard, 31, Bedford (Bedford County), March 19.
Sandri, Army Sgt. Matthew Joseph, 24, Shamokin (Northumberland), March 20.
Mitchell, Army Sgt. Sean Robert, 24, Youngsville (Warren), March 31.
Barr, Marine Lance Cpl. Aric Julius, 22, Hazelwood (Allegheny), April 3.
Kephart, Army Spc. Jonathan Roy, 21, Oil City (Venango), April 9.
Carman, Army Staff Sgt. Edward William, 27, McKeesport (Allegheny), April 17.
Baker, Army National Guard Sgt. Sherwood Russell, 30, Plymouth (Luzerne), April 26.
Kondor, Army Spc. Martin Wilson, 20, York (York), April 29.
Jenkins, Naval Reserve Petty Officer Robert Boyd, 35, Altoona (Blair), May 2.
Baum, Marine Reserve Gunnery Sgt. Ronald Eric, 38, Hollidaysburg (Blair), May 3.
Kritzer, Army Pfc. Bradley Gordon, 19, Irvona (Clearfield), May 5.
Curran, Army National Guard Sgt. Carl Francis II, 22, Union City (Erie), May 17.
Kasecky, Army National Guard Spc. Mark Joseph, 20, McKees Rocks (Allegheny), May 17.
Horton, Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Jeremy Richard, 24, Erie, (Erie) May 21.
Coleman, Army Pfc. Bradli Nathaniel, 19, Ford City, (Armstrong) May 30.
Todd, Marine Reserve Cpl. John Harrison, 24, Bridgeport (Montgomery), June 29.
Davies, Army Spc. Shawn Michael, 22, Aliquippa (Beaver), July 8.
Lloyd, Army Sgt. Dale Thomas, 22, Watsontown (Northumberland), July 19.
Zangara, Army Spc. Nicholas John, 21, Philadelphia (Philadelphia), July 24.
Morrison, Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bradley, 23, Carlisle (Cumberland), Aug. 13.
Santoriello, Army 1st Lt. Neil Anthony, 24, Verona (Allegheny), Aug. 13.
Humhanz, Marine Cpl. Barton Russell, 23, Hellertown (Northampton), Aug. 26.
Mallery, John N., 28, civilian contractor, Mt. Lebanon (Allegheny), Sept. 4
Adams, Army Sgt. Brandon Edwin, 22, Hollidaysburg (Blair), Sept. 19.
Henry, Army Spc. Joshua Justice, 21, Avonmore, (Westmoreland), Sept. 20.
Moxley, Army National Guard Spc. Clifford Leonard Jr., 51, Berwick (Columbia), Sept. 25.
Cox, Army Spc. Gregory Alan, 21, Carmichaels (Greene), Sept. 27.
Jones, Army Spc. Rodney Aaron, 21, Philadelphia, Sept. 30.
Rusin, Army Private Aaron James, 19, Johnstown (Cambria), Oct. 11.
Phelan, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Mark Patrick, 44, Green Lane (Montgomery), Oct. 13.
Wells, Marine Sgt. Lonny Diion, 29, Vandergrift (Westmoreland), Nov. 9.
Nolan, Army Sgt. Joseph Michael, 27, Philadelphia, Nov. 18.
Cohen, Marine Cpl. Michael Ryan, 23, Jacobus (York), Nov. 22.
Renehan, Marine Cpl. Kyle Joseph, 21, Oxford (Chester), Dec. 9.
First Published: December 25, 2004, 5:00 a.m.
