Fernando Baxter Hannon, Marines, Pfc -- Rest In Peace

Fernando Baxter Hannon, 19

Marines, Private 1st Class
Based: Camp Pendleton
3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: August 15, 2004
Fallouja (near), Iraq
Engaged
Gender: Male
Hometown: Wildomar
High School: John Marshall Senior High (Los Angeles)
Burial: East Kern Cemetery, Mojave, Calif.

Sitting in their small, humble home in Mojave, Calif., it's hard for the Hannon family to talk about Fern, as they called him, without smiling or laughing, even in their grief.
"He just glowed," said his sister Sonya.
Even as a broad-shouldered man, standing 6 feet 3, Hannon could still fold himself into the arms of his much shorter mother.
She remembered how he would rest his head on her shoulder and promise that he would see to it that, one day, she would not have to work.

Growing up with three older sisters and a younger brother made him a compassionate and warm person, who rarely raised his voice and was generous with his affection, his family said.

His sisters also passed down a love of baking from scratch and watching soap operas, his sister Alicia Tovar said.
During his calls home from Iraq, Hannon would needle his sister for updates of "The Young and the Restless," but he would whisper so the soldiers waiting behind him for the telephone could not hear, Sonya Hannon said.

Hannon's fiance, Ruth Ponce, 21, remembered him as an unassuming young man who wooed her without knowing it. … "He would laugh with his whole spirit," she said. "I'm just glad we found each other."

Read more about Marines, Private 1st Class Fernando Baxter Hannon here.