Cpl. Brian Oliveira, U.S.M.C (KIA)

Final salute

By Janine L. Weisman/Daily News staff

A fallen hero was carried past a field of pumpkins, a reservoir dotted with Canada geese and horses grazing in a quiet pasture en route to his final resting place Thursday morning.

Amid early November's gold- and rust-hued tranquility, the body of 22-year-old Marine Corps Cpl. Brian Oliveira was laid in the ground in the last section on the right in St. Columba's Cemetery in Middletown. The soldier from Raynham, Mass., was killed in Iraq on Oct. 25.

He was a platoon squad leader with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division of I Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Now he is forever assigned to Section 46, Lot 276, Grave 3 in the Catholic cemetery overlooking Narragansett Bay.

The Marine Corps public affairs office at Camp Pendleton released little information about his death, saying only that he died "from injuries received from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq."

Al Anbar is Iraq's largest province and shares a border with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It is home to the city Fallujah, located west of Baghdad and considered the nexus of the insurgency fighting against U.S. and coalition forces.

Oliveira left behind a wife, Phoebe, and an infant son he never had the chance to hold. Nathan Brian Oliveira was born Sept. 11, and his father knew him only from photographs.

His funeral marked the second on Aquidneck Island in less than a month for a soldier killed in Iraq. Sgt. Christopher Potts, a National Guardsman from Tiverton, was killed Oct. 3 while manning a traffic checkpoint northwest of Baghdad. He was buried Oct. 13 in Trinity Cemetery in Portsmouth. More than 1,100 members of the U.S. military have been killed in action in Iraq since March 2003.

Mourners filled St. Barnabas Catholic Church in Portsmouth, where the Rev. Randolph G. Cheu observed that Oliveira's death is a painful reminder of how short life is, no matter how long we are on the earth.

"One that we have loved has been taken from us at such an early age, at 22. Our hearts are heavy. Our prayers are needed," Cheu said.

"His life was given for all of us. It was given for us, this nation."

The funeral began at the Connors Funeral Home in Portsmouth, where mourners who waited to approach his open casket passed by a collage of photographs of Oliveira. One showed a tan, muscular soldier standing in his barracks, another a happy young boy riding a green bike, and there were various snapshots of Oliveira posing with family members and friends.

As a young boy, Oliveira lived in Tiverton and his paternal grandmother, Miriam Horseman, still lives there. His family chose St. Barnabas Church for the site of his funeral Mass because the church can accommodate about 600 people. About 100 of those attending the soldier's funeral were Marines. Oliveira had enlisted in the Marines in January 2001 and was deployed to Iraq from January through June 2003 before going back last June.

State Police held up traffic at points on East Main Road and West Main Road for the lengthy procession of vehicles traveling from the church to the cemetery. Drivers momentarily prevented from going about their day looked out their windows with grim understanding as the Providence police motorcycle escort, the hearse and the long line of cars with headlights on streamed by.

Middletown Police Sgt. Robert Terlisner played the bagpipes outside the church and at the cemetery, where the sizable crowd gathered in a large horseshoe around the flag-draped casket. There were shots fired in a last salute to the Marine who gave his life. Then there was heavy silence as two Marines folded a flag in the slow and precise way that honors a fallen comrade. Flags were presented to Oliveira's wife, his mother, Lillian Oliveira of Fall River, Mass., and his father, David Horseman of Marion, Mass.

Family members went up to the casket to say their final goodbyes and the crowd slowly dispersed, leaving Marine 1st Sgt. Todd M. Parisi, assigned to the General Support Motor Transport Co. in Providence, alone to give the final salute.

The cemetery foreman, Keith Rezendes, moved in with four assistants to lower the casket onto the concrete liner at the bottom of the seven-foot deep hole dug two days earlier. Waiting in the distance while the mourners finished their observance, Rezendes had watched Phoebe Oliveira holding the infant son who will grow up relying on photographs and the recollections of others to know his father.

"My dad passed away when I was young. I was 11," Rezendes said. "That kid here will never know his dad."