BRADENTON - "Oh my God."

The Rev. Joe Connolly said those were the first words he and many others uttered when they learned Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Eugene Dougherty had died.

They were also likely the last words the 20-year-old said before dying in Iraq, Connolly said.

"You said it in desperation, in prayerful hope that someone was wrong," Connolly told the hundreds of mourners gathered at Scott's funeral Mass Saturday. "But he said it in adoration. All his fears and all his pain were wiped away in that moment."

And when Scott arrived in heaven, Connolly guessed, he probably said something he had said so many times on Earth.

"Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Eugene Dougherty reporting for duty, sir."

The Mass drew hundreds to Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Catholic church, where people paid their final respects to Scott, who died July 6.

The Pentagon reported Scott and another Marine died as a result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Both were assigned to 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Draped in an ivory cloth, his coffin was placed at the front of the church's center aisle.

The slain Marine's family and fellow Marines filled the front pews near the altar where a photo of Scott, a number of floral wreaths and two neatly folded flags - one for Scott's father, Keith, and another for his mother, Debra - were set on pedestals.

After communion, a pair of Marines walked out of the pews and presented Scott's parents each with the American flags. Then a second pair of uniformed Marines stood before Keith Dougherty to present him with the Purple Heart his son earned in battle.

As the Mass concluded, a Marine Corps honor guard stood outside the church to give Scott a 21-gun salute. With the mourners still gathered inside, the shots rang out sharply and echoed in the church. Then almost without pause, a bugler played the sorrowful notes of Taps and the faint sound drifted peacefully into the church.

Walking out of the church behind her son's casket, Scott's sister, Nicole, and father, Keith, walked out weeping as they held each other arm in arm. Debra Dougherty clutched the flag and held it up against her heart. With the casket moving through the church doors, a half dozen Marines stood tall and saluted.

Scott was the third Manatee County man to die serving in Iraq. He was also the third with ties to Bayshore High School.

Bayshore graduate Nicholas Hogan, 19, and senior Richard Jenkins, 17, knew Scott as well as Marine Pfc. Christopher Cobb, who was 19 when he became the first Manatee County man to die in Iraq on April 6.

"I saw the front page, and it shocked me entirely," Jenkins said about how he learned his JROTC classmate died.

Though their friend is gone, the many happy memories of Scott remain, they said.

"He was funny - very funny," Hogan said.

"He always knew how to make everybody smile," Jenkins added.

"He was a little guy," Jenkins said holding his hand in the air up to about the height Scott stood. "But when we had physical training, there was no one who could keep up with him."

The losses have brought the school's student body closer because it's forced them to appreciate each other, Jenkins and Hogan said.

"Everyone embraces each other," Hogan said.

"You see people that don't really like each other hugging," Jenkins said.

The young men said they will be forced to relive the heartache when they break the tragic news to friends who have yet to hear that Scott is dead.

"We have a friend who still doesn't know. He was in Puerto Rico when it happened," Jenkins said. "It's going to hurt me just to see the look on his face when he finds out."

Some who attended Scott's funeral never even knew the young man but felt as if they should be there to pay tribute to him.

About a dozen members of a Manatee County Marine parents support group came to the Mass together, said group founder Donna Jungman.

"We came to honor a fallen Marine," Jungman said, crying. "We just felt like we needed to honor him and his family, and we came together because we needed each other's support."

Brent Boerst, who served as a Marine in the 1980s, brought his pair of English bulldogs, Jarhead and Harley - the Marine Corps' mascots - to the church.

"We're a band of brothers, and we stand together," said Boerst, who stopped by to meet Scott's father after seeing the Marine Corps banners and flag outside the family's Bayshore Gardens home.

"Once a Marine, always a Marine," Boerst said.