Friday, March 28, 2003 | 11:15 a.m.
TONOPAH -- More than 350 people gathered this morning at the high school in this high desert town halfway between Las Vegas and Reno to remember an adopted son who was killed in Iraq.
U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr. was one of at least nine Marines killed Sunday in fighting near Nasiriyah, Iraq. He was Nevada's first casualty in the war, and the flag at the state capitol was at half staff today in his honor.
From the Pentagon this morning came word that Pokorney had been posthumously promoted to first lieutenant, and in the Tonopah High School gym, where the 6-foot-7-inch Pokorney had played center for the Tonopah Muckers basketball squad, the bleachers were filled. The town's students, many wearing school jackets, sat alongside veterans in military uniforms. The crowd was clad in red, white and blue.
Two honor guards, Nye County sheriff's deputies and the Nevada Highway Patrol troopers, all in dress uniforms, handled the solemn presentation of colors, and the Rev. Kenneth Curtis, pastor of the Bellmont Church, traveled the 50 miles to Tonopah to reassure the grieving that everyone would be reunited one day.
The high school's principal, Barbara Floto, presented 31 roses -- one flower for each year of Pokorney's life -- to former Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke and his family. The Liesekes had raised Pokorney as one of their own from the time Pokorney was 16 years old.
"Fred died a hero, but he was always my hero," Lieseke said.
Floto told the crowd that "this tragedy brought home to us a war that had only existed on television. Fred was one of us, one like you students of Tonopah High School. We have lost one of our own and pay tribute to someone who will always be one of us."
He was sitting in the front row of bleachers with his family. His daughter, Christina Lieseke, was accompanied by her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt. Joe Uribe from Nellis Air Force Base, who was in his blue dress uniform.
Scott Rogers, 54, wore his green Marine uniform to the memorial. He retired from the Corps in 1986 after 20 years. A seven-year resident of Tonopah, he used to own a lounge in town and met Pokorney when the young man was visiting while on leave.
"In a town this small you meet everybody eventually," Rogers said.
Tonopah's population is about 3,600.
"When I heard that someone from Tonopah had been killed over there, my heart stopped," Rogers said.
He knew that he would know the dead soldier, but his worst fears were for his own 22-year-old son, Jericho, a Marine with the 15th Expeditionary Force who has been in the region around Iraq since January.
Rogers said that he was relieved his son was not the one killed but that he was heartbroken for Pokorney's family and loved ones.
"I'm here today to support Fred Pokorney, my son and the Marine Corps," Rogers said.
Rogers said he understood how hard it must have been for Lieseke to have been waiting and wondering about Pokorney's fate.
"We don't get much information from over there, and the letters are always two weeks behind," Rogers said.
This morning Lieseke carried in his breast pocket a letter that Pokorney had written to him March 8. Lieseke didn't receive it until three days after Pokorney had been killed. In it, Pokorney wrote of being anxious to get his job done and come home, and he fretted about missing his daughter's birthday.
The block lettering that Pokorney used was done carefully and precisely, Lieseke said. "That was just like Fred," Lieseke said, remembering how Pokorney's perfectionism.
Though 78 years old, Sandy Spicer, the commander of the VFW branch in Tonopah and a retired Esmerelda County deputy sheriff, handled the flag raising at the end of the ceremony with a military precision that observers said would have made Pokorney proud. Bagpipes played "Amazing Grace" as Spicer carried out his duties.
"This is a town that really backs our troops and anyone who doesn't like it can stay the hell out of Tonopah," Spicer said before the ceremony.
A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, Spicer has lived in Tonopah since 1968 and got to know Pokorney at the Tonopah High School football games. Pokorney was a wide receiver and defensive lineman for the team.
"He was just a damn nice kid," Spicer said.
Pokorney graduated from the school in 1989.
Paper banners in the halls of his alma mater ask students to remember Pokorney and the other soldiers fighting in Iraq. Those banners will likely be up for the rest of the school year. The banners in the front hall of the school also note that 34 other Tonopah High School alumni are serving in the military, and their names are listed.
After the memorial, Erika Gutierrez, an 18-year-old Tonopah senior, said it had left her saddened and "made me think so much. I didn't expect it to make me think so much. ... Now I will think about it a little more."
Nye County Sheriff Tony Demeo, a Vietnam veteran and Pahrump resident who was elected three months ago, said Tonopah residents heard that there will be a war protest next week in Las Vegas so they plan to have a candlelight vigil in their town as a counter to that.
Nye County School Superintendent William Roberts, who served 22 years in the Army before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1990, said that flags are at half staff at all schools in the 18,400 square miles of Nye County.
"We each enjoy the freedoms earned by veterans," he told the assembly. "As you students go about your activities in the classroom or on the athletic field I hope you remember what these people did for you."
Tonopah claims Pokorney as its own thanks to Lieseke and his wife, Suze, and after the memorial the crowd lined up to offer the Liesekes condolences.
A teenage girl in a Tonopah High School T-shirt told them that although she was too young to have known Pokorney, she was grateful for his sacrifice.
"Fred would have given the ceremony his stamp of approval," Wade Lieseke said. "He enjoyed doing random acts of kindness when he wasn't being a tough Marine."
He met Pokorney 15 years ago when Pokorney was dating his daughter. The 16-year-old had moved from Southern California to Tonopah after his mother died. Soon after making the move the aunt Pokorney was living with in Tonopah also passed away.
Pokorney wanted to stay in Tonopah, about 220 miles northwest of Las Vegas, instead of moving back to California with his biological father, and the Liesekes took him in.
While in Tonopah Pokorney worked jobs as a waiter, dishwasher and cook at the now-closed Mizpah Hotel.
Pokorney joined the Marines soon after graduating from high school and attended Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., where he graduated with a degree in military science, Lieseke said.
"I guess somebody with the Marines realized he was officer material and they sent him to college," Lieseke said. "Fred had character and integrity, and he was really an example of what a Marine should be."
Pokorney was assigned to the Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He lived in North Carolina with his wife, Carolyn Rochelle, nicknamed Chelle, and 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Taylor.
The Associated Press
contributed to this story.
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