First in a series
[img]2642|right|Mario Ferrara||no_popup[/img]Dateline Torrance – How do you, as a parent, respond when your soldier son is killed in action thousands of miles from home?
After one of Mario and Linda Ferrara’s four sons from their high-achieving family was killed in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2007, the Daily Breeze, the South Bay’s newspaper of record, reported the tragedy of U.S. Army Lt. Matt Ferrara at the tender but accomplished age of 24.
The Ferraras wanted to know much more, each barely visible, lint-sized detail of Matt’s final moments.
They wanted to know so much more because of it is a natural form of parental emotional starvation.
All five of their children qualified for entry to West Point.
Secondarily perhaps, they sought closure.
Not too soon, though. Not until they had learned all that Matt knew at the end.
When a solider son dies in war, some parents close themselves off. They reason they already are maximally suffering.
Others, like the Ferraras, are fueled by an unrelieved hunger. They seek every detail about their son’s last minutes.
As intimate as it is possible to become, they thirstily
wondered, what did he experience?
Were his thoughts knowable?
Who were there?
How did the enemy close in?
More, please.
Neither of the grieving Ferraras, was mollified by a single obituary in the Breeze. Mr. Ferrara set about combing the internet for further reports about the killing of Matt and the surrounding wartime circumstances. “I was searching for any kind of news about Matt,” Mr. Ferrara said.
When he came across an account in this newspaper (“Hearts Beat More Slowly When a Son of Promise Dies in War”), “that story struck me particularly. It really read my emotions, right down the line. Everything the story said was hard for me to…”
Now 70 years old, Mario Ferrara, native San Diegan who married a “really smart” girl from Auckland, New Zealand, 45 years ago, is a most inventive, resourceful gentleman.
In the following days, “we had so many people coming. I had some cameras of my own, and I wanted to be able to put them on a computer. So I bought a new computer three or four weeks after…”
And now the record of those days has been preserved.
(To be continued)
