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Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Mortar attack Sunday in Iraq takes life of Volusia County man
By LYDA LONGA | News-Journal Staff Writer
DAYTONA BEACH — At 3:30 Monday afternoon, Karen Anderson's world caved in.
Standing at the front door of her house on Center Street were two uniformed officials from the U.S. Navy – a chaplain and a chief – somber and ramrod straight.
When the chaplain started out with the words "The United States regrets..." Anderson silenced them.
"I knew that Michael was dead and I didn't want to hear it," she said Tuesday. "When (the military) come to the door, you want to slam it. I just wanted them to go away. I wanted them to tell me he was injured or something."
But Michael Charles Anderson, a drywall hanger who loved nothing more than playing with his 7-year-old daughter, Brandi, had been killed Sunday after mortar fire hit a building where he and two other sailors were working near Ramadi, Iraq.
Michael Anderson was 37.
Another two sailors died later the same day of injuries received in the same attack. A U.S. Army soldier also died, Navy officials said.
The attack came the day after Michael Anderson's eighth wedding anniversary.
"He called me three times last week, and that was rare," said Karen Anderson, 47. "It was because of our anniversary."
On Tuesday morning, Karen Anderson was riding the roller coaster of emotions that follow in the hours after someone earns a loved one has died. She cried, she laughed and she got angry. In a rapid-fire voice, she said she was mad at her husband for enlisting.
Then she smiled, remembering Michael.
“They got one of the good ones,” she said, tears welling up.
Michael Anderson was known by his friends and co-workers at Baylor Plastering & Drywall in Holly Hill as a man who would give up his free time to help anyone who needed it. He had joined the U.S. Navy after graduating from high school in Oshkosh, Wis., in 1985.
Although he was born in Daytona Beach, he moved to Wisconsin with his parents and his older sister, Sandy, when the children were 3 and 6.
After boot camp in California, Michael Anderson was sent to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in Mayport, his sister said.
“He just wanted out of Oshkosh; he wanted to do something with his life,” said Sandy Anderson as she cried softly.
And he got that chance in Iraq after his Naval Reserve unit was deployed April 1.
Navy spokeswoman Miriam Lareau said the 730-person Seabee unit – Navy Mobile Construction Battalion 14 stationed out of the Jacksonville Naval Air Station – was charged with carrying out humanitarian aid.
“The people there (in Iraq) don’t realize what they’ve done,” said Dave Hoskins, Michael Anderson’s best friend and a co-worker at Baylor. “He would have helped them incredibly.”
Baylor’s chief executive officer, Gary Dillman Jr. agreed: “He was just a good man.”
As Karen Anderson fielded telephone calls and talked with a reporter Tuesday morning, friends began arriving at her door to express their condolences.
A young man whom Michael Anderson had befriended was one of those who showed up. For a few seconds, he stood at the front door, where the Navy chaplain and chief had stood the day before, refusing to believe his friend was gone.
“I heard about it on TV this morning – but it isn’t true, is it?” the man asked Karen Anderson.
When she told him it was, the man stepped outside and stood in the front yard, looking out at the street.
Karen Anderson had spent the early morning hours looking at photographs of her husband. In one colorful picture, he was dressed as the Scarecrow from “The Wizard of Oz;” next to him, pretending to be the lost Kansas farm girl, Dorothy, was his beloved Brandi.
“She was his life,” Karen Anderson said of their daughter. “I’ll show you what kind of father he was.”
Karen Anderson put a video cassette into the television. The short movie, entitled “Brandi and Daddy,” was a showcase of still pictures of Michael Anderson with his daughter, from the day she was born until recently. He smiled in every photo as he fed, played with and tucked his daughter into bed.
Brandi insisted on going to school Tuesday morning. After the little girl saw a picture of her father on the morning news, her mother said, the youngster “lost it.” She then announced that she wanted to have a “normal day.”
“She told me, ‘Mommy, this just isn’t fair,’ ” Karen Anderson said. “And I told her that I thought she had put it better than anyone.
Iraq Toll Mounts
756 U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of military operations
618 U.S. service members who have died on or since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over
5 Members of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 14 killed in a mortar attack Sunday: Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael C. Anderson, Daytona Beach; Petty Officer 2nd Class Trace W. Dossett, Orlando; Petty Officer 2nd Class Scott R. Mchugh, Boca Raton; Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert B. Jenkins, Stuart; Petty Officer 3rd Class Ronald A. Ginther, Auburndale