Family Remembers Their "Gung-Ho" Young Marine

Marine Cpl. Richard P. Waller

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ARTICLE ABOUT INFANTRYMAN WHO DIED OF WOUNDS, AND LIKE PERICLES STATES IN HIS CLASSIC SPEECH OVER 2000-YEARS AGO, FUNERAL ORATION, FAMILY WANTS NO PITY BUT SHOULD RECEIVE COMFORT. THEY'VE MADE A PRICELESS SACRIFICE FOR FREEDOM, AND WE HONOR THEM HERE.

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Star-Telegram.com

Family remembers their 'gung-ho' young Marine
By CHRIS VAUGHN
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

FORT WORTH — Marine Cpl. Richard P. Waller, at the beginning of his third tour in Iraq, complained to his parents that he was in a quiet area and that he wasn’t getting any action.

“He was disappointed,” his stepfather, Kenneth Strickland, said. “He was a very gung-ho young man.”

Known in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines as “the motivator” because of his intensity, Cpl. Waller, 22, was killed by a sniper’s lone shot last Friday in a village near Fallujah.

Cpl. Waller, a 2002 Western Hills High School graduate who was known as Ricky, was on top of a building providing security for a group of Marines on foot, the military told his family. He died of his injuries a few hours later.

Services for Cpl. Waller will be 10 a.m. Monday at Greenwood Memorial Park in Fort Worth.

His mother, Vicki Murrell-Strickland, and stepfather said that from the time he was a little boy, all Cpl. Waller wanted to be was a Marine.

Several generations of his family had served in the military for close to the last 90 years.

He enlisted in the Marines in October 2002 and planned to re-enlist this autumn, they said. Despite three combat deployments in three years, he didn’t want it any other way, they said.

“I’ve never seen a guy eat it up as much as he did,” Kenneth Strickland said. “He loved his wife and children, but he wanted the action.”

Cpl. Waller married former high school classmate Adrian Acevedo in 2003. They had three children, Nick, 4, Victoria, 2, and Tyler Kenneth, born March 26 while Cpl. Waller was on his latest deployment.

On an informal Web site with Charlie Company news, the Wallers received congratulations in e-mail postings in late March, only to have condolences posted two weeks later.

But his mother and stepfather insisted that they shouldn’t be pitied because, they said, Cpl. Waller knew the risks of his job. They had talked about it before each deployment.

In a statement provided to the Star-Telegram, his mother wrote, “Even though he left this earth at an early age, he left doing something he believed in, was happy to do and he lived his short life the way we all should — with no regrets.”

Chris Vaughn,
(817) 390-7547
cvaughn@star-telegram.com

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