It was a solemn ceremony for Queens Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) when they met in Middle Village recently, to help the family of a wounded brother.
At a ceremony on Wednesday, January 13, VFW members presented a check for $14,000 collected by posts around Queens to Alex Marrocco, the father of a wounded Iraq war veteran, to help the family.
Assemblymember Mike Miller officiated at the ceremony and, obviously moved, promised to support veterans going forward.
The eyes of several generations of war veterans welled with tears at Haspel-Staab Post No. 551, located at 84-02 60th Avenue, as they watched a documentary about the young warrior’s survival.
Brendan Marrocco arrived in Iraq as a 22-year-old infantryman – driving a MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle for the 27th infantry in hostile country, 130 miles north of Baghdad.
He hung up the phone after a conversation with his dad and went out on a patrol just after midnight on Easter Sunday,April 12, 2009.
On their way back to base, Marrocco’s vehicle was destroyed by a sophisticated explosive device, engineered to defeat the armor. He left Iraq for a hospital in Germany shortly afterwards, severely burned, with damage to his left eye – and no arms or legs.
Miraculously, Marrocco survived. The blast that penetrated his door was so hot it cauterized his wounds.
Two of the three other soldiers in the vehicle were wounded – one died – but by the time his unit returned from Iraq, Marrocco was standing on prosthetic legs.
His older brother, Mike, quit a job with Citibank in Manhattan to live and work full-time with his kid brother at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, where dad and mother Michelle, herself a nurse, take turns visiting.
After more than 13 surgeries, Brendan is on his third set of legs, each longer and more facile than the other – and trying to adjust to prosthetic arms.
