In Memoriam

Scottsdale woman, sons mourn loss of Marine

 

Marine Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar was described by his Scottsdale widow as someone willing to do anything for his country. He believed in it, served it, protected it and died for it.

Plouhar, 30, and Leigha Plouhar were high school sweethearts who would’ve celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary on November 16.

Instead, today, Plouhar and her two sons, Raymond, 9, and Michael, 5, are flying to Michigan, where Plouhar’s body will soon arrive for funeral services and burial in his hometown of Lake Orion, near where his parents live.

Plouhar, a former Marine recruiter who appeared in Michael Moore’s controversial documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” was killed Monday by a roadside bomb in Iraq’s Al Anbar province. He was 38 days shy of completing his second tour of duty in Iraq.

As Leigha and the two boys went to their apartment in north Scottsdale early Thursday evening, it seemed like any normal summer day.

But it was far from that.

This summer, the boys won’t be able to swim with their father at Lake Orion or camp with him in Grayland, Mich. And Raymond Plouhar won’t see his sons off to Stars Prep Academy.

“Raymond understands and Michael doesn’t,” Leigha Plouhar said about the death of the boys’ father. “Raymond has his moments.”

Michael chimed in, “I’m going to fly on an airplane to see my grandpa.”

Raymond sometimes wrestled with his dad and played video games with him. “I have my moments where I cry and where I don’t cry,” he said, “but I cry when I start thinking about him.” Leigha, who works as a preschool teacher at Kinder Care, said she moved in July 2004 from Michigan to S cottsdale because her parents live here, and so Raymond, who was stationed at Camp Pendleton in California, wouldn’t have to travel as far to see them.

“The most he ever got done when he was on break was doing things with his sons like swimming, fishing and camping,” Leigha Plouhar said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, yet. I don’t know if I’ll move back to Michigan or stay here.”

As she held her sons on the couch, her thoughts were on her late husband and his love for being in the military.

“We’re just proud of him,” she said. “He’s a Marine through and through. He’d do anything for his country.”

Family members said Raymond Plouhar was offended by how he and the Marines were portrayed in the film, and he didn’t know the movie was going to be a critical look at President Bush’s administration and the war in Iraq.

When Plouhar was a recruiter, he was ordered to be in the film after the Marines were misled into believing they were going to appear in a cable TV documentary, his father said.

The movie, released in 2004, portrayed Plouhar as targeting kids from only poor neighborhoods, which upset the soldier, his father said.

“He felt he was betrayed,” Leigha Plouhar said. “Being a Marine was in his veins. He talked to some attorneys about what he could about the way they made him look in the movie, and people in the military, but everything was hush-hush. I don’t know if anything ever really came of it.”

Staff Sgt. Plouhar also was described by his father as someone who always helped the underdog, said the soldier’s father, Raymond Plouhar of Orion, Mich.

“He handed candy to kids in Iraq,” his father said. “He loved life and loved children. He loved to protect children.”

A former sniper, Plouhar’s most-recent responsibility was to patrol for explosive devices and destroy them, his father said.

Twice in the last two months, Plouhar was injured by roadside bombs while destroying them. He received a concussion because he was close to the force of the blast, Raymond Plouhar said. The third time he wasn’t as lucky.

“He was hit,” his father said. “They set the bombs off, and sometimes they got too close.”

Other men in his unit were injured and killed in Monday’s blast, but the Pentagon hasn’t released their names.

Leigha Plouhar said when Raymond told her he was going to Iraq for a second tour, she told him that she didn’t want him to go.

“He couldn’t wait to go,” she said. “He said, ‘I have to. It’s my duty.’ He wanted to go there and make it a better place and make the U.S. proud of what it was doing.”

As the boys horseplayed on the floor, Raymond said, “I wanted him to stay.”