Deputy Commandant for Information

NEW YORK -- The family of fallen Lance Cpl. William White held a memorial service for their beloved Marine at White’s childhood home in Bushwick, Brooklyn on March 29th. 

“Part of keeping the memory of veterans and service members alive is to remember them through a memorial ceremony.  Unfortunately, it’s a part of the veterans’ community,” said former Marine and the Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Veterans Affairs Clarice Joynes.

“I attend memorial ceremonies within the five boroughs, and I also go to commemorations.   Being service members, we go to war and part of war is loss.  It was a very small and poignant ceremony that his mother put together of family, friends, and a few service members who came to pay their respects to a mother who lost her son in action.”

White, a field radio operator attached to the 3rd Amphibious Assault Battalion, 1st Marine Division, died in Iraq on March 29, 2003 from hypothermia and drowning as a result of his Humvee rolling into a canal of water.

The 24-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y. native and son of a U.S. Army veteran graduated from Bushwick High School in 1998 and enlisted in the Marines.  He was the first service member from New York to fall in the line of duty, and is greatly mourned by his wife, mother, and younger brothers, among others. 

Today, the intersection of Bushwick Avenue and Lance Corporal William Wayne White Street stands as a beacon of remembrance for the young William who grew up playing there.