![]() His mother said he was continuing to address his problems and was optimistic about the future. He started working on his issues with alcohol, which had gotten him into some trouble, including an arrest earlier this year. “When he came back he was a different person.” “Ivan didn't really talk about it much at all,” she said. When he returned home on leave, he kept his thoughts on what he'd seen in that country mostly to himself, his mother said. Ivan Wilson himself was scraped up in a building explosion, but otherwise came away unhurt. During his time there some of his Marine friends were seriously injured in a bridge explosion, Denise Wilson said. He spent January to August of 2007 in Iraq as part of the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment's Fox Company. ![]() It was a decision, she said, that he felt was one of the best choices he'd made in a very long time.Īfter joining the Marines Ivan Wilson the man began to take shape. Joining the Marines was a path he took to get his life straightened out, a decision he made “when other things just weren't working out in his world,” his mother wrote in a prepared statement. Ivan Wilson wasn't afraid to try different things, and his mother never faltered in backing him up. “It just didn't work out for him so he came home,” Denise Wilson said. ![]() He briefly attended College of the Redwoods. He would graduate in 2004 from Clearlake Community School. His mother said he attended local schools, eventually wrestling and playing football at Lower Lake High, where both he and sister Jackie were in the SERVE Academy, an academic program with special focus areas including emergency response. Ivan Wilson was born in Sonora on May 29, 1986, and he grew up in Clearlake, living with his family in an apartment on Old Highway 53. “I just don't believe that he's gone,” she said of her son, who she called “Sonny Boy Ivan.” Lance Corporal Matthew Perry called him “an outstanding friend,” still another Marine who only signed his name as “Quinn” called Ivan Wilson a “hero amongst the proud and few.” Tombleson, said that, had it not been for Ivan Wilson – who laid down M16 rounds as well as explosive rounds to cover him in an exposed position – he wouldn't have survived. They remembered him variously as a brave and respected Marine, someone whose sense of humor and friendship made their service easier, and a good young man whose life ended suddenly. “Ivan was one of the most respectful and delightful young men I ever had the pleasure of working with on my recruiting tour,” Archer wrote.ĭenise Wilson, with 19-year-old daughter Jackie at her side, reads through the e-mails from Archer and many other young men who knew her son – known to them variously as “Willy” or “Juggernaut” – and whose lives he obviously touched. Michael Archer, sent Denise Wilson an email July 27, recounting his first meeting with her son on a rainy morning in December 2004 in a Middletown deli. So he turned to the Marines, a place many young people have looked for opportunity.Ī Marine recruiter, Sgt. “Life was hard for Ivan,” his mother said. His route to that day had included a brief stint at College of the Redwoods living in a tent city in Seattle, where he'd veered off a planned trip to work on the fishing boats in Alaska and other places he'd sought to make a place for himself but where his family said the fit just wasn't right. 12 would have marked the third anniversary of the day, back in 2005, when he got to the US Marines training center in San Diego and put his boots on the yellow outlines, sealing himself into the brotherhood of the Marine Corps. She said she wakes up often in a cold sweat now, as if anticipating that knock again and again.īut this time when she wakes, it's the voice of her 3-year-old son, Nathaniel that she hears, telling her, “Momma, everything is going to be OK.”ĭenise Wilson's son Ivan was the first member of the US Armed Forces from Lake County to die in the current war in the Middle East. The news they brought was the worst the mother of a Marine could expect – that her 22-year-old son, Ivan Wilson, had died earlier that day in Afghanistan, on his second tour of duty in the Middle East. The 41-year-old mother of three opened the door – which is decorated with two yellow ribbons and framed by two small US flags – to find two US Marines acting as messengers. CLEARLAKE – The knock that came at Denise Wilson's front door early on the morning of July 21 would change her life – and that of her family – forever.
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