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Marine Staff Sgt. Phillip Jordan, 42, and his son Tyler in May 2002 in Paris Island, S.C.

SSgt. Phillip A. Jordan, U.S.M.C (KIA)

(two stories, reprinted from the Hartford Courant, March 28, 2003)

True Heroes Aren't On Court
March 28, 2003

SAN ANTONIO - They are the brave fighting men you read about in the fine print of newspapers and watch on cable television news through the green lens of nighttime goggles. They are sand-swept faces in a horrible, yet faraway place.

Then two Marines and a chaplain show up in our hometown and the horror is ours. The smell of war is pressed against our nostrils, terror shoved hard against our chests.

"There's always a distance when we talk about our kids generically, isn't there?" UConn coach Jim Calhoun said Thursday. "Then it's someone from Enfield, a place I must have driven through a zillion times, and suddenly it's much closer, much more real."

Staff Sgt. Phil Jordan was a son of Texas and a father in Connecticut, and no basketball game between those states' universities - no matter how big a deal - should be played tonight without considering our collective sacrifice.

Jordan was a Marine, and he was an athlete.

He once was a ward of the state of Texas, fundamentally in their debt.

Today, we are in his.

Nothing was given to him in life, and in the end, he gave everything he had.

The 6-foot-3, 230-pounder was, at 42, still drill sergeant buff. Inside, he was mush.

On March 13, Jordan called Amanda from Kuwait. Their ninth wedding anniversary was last week and he knew war would prevent him from calling on the actual date.

Amanda, a Connecticut girl, calls Jordan the nicest, most considerate guy you would ever meet. They called him P.J., and when his disposition insisted on being so damn sunny, his Marine pals started calling him Gump - as in Forrest. He mentored the young guys. He was trained to kill, Amanda's stepfather Jay Paretzky said, and gentle to the soul.

He was a standout defensive end in high school. He was a sprinter, too. And he was a terrific bowler.

"He won some tournaments," Paretzky said. "He was considering turning pro after he left the Marine Corps."

Jordan learned to play by the rules and live by the regulations and, in the end, he died in a land where they honor neither. There is an old proverb in England that wars are won on the playing fields of Eton. But the referee's whistle, indeed, the Geneva Convention, is not heard in the Iraqi desert.

This is why Amanda does not consider her man to be killed in action. She calls him a murder victim.

"I have conflicting thoughts that make sense when you hear them," she said Thursday night. "In war, I don't think there should be rules. You're fighting for your country and your life, and you fight until you achieve your objective. But at the same time, there are rules in war. So when you are deceived, it's not dying in combat. It's planned. It's murder."

Jordan was as prepared as possible, but who among the nine Marines who perished near An Nasiriyah on Sunday could be prepared for what followed? Iraqi soldiers had raised their hands in surrender, but it turned out to be a deadly ruse. It was an ambush. The Iraqis drew their weapons and fired.

"A horrible tragedy," Calhoun said.

They have been asked repeatedly about the war during the past week, these players and coaches in the NCAA Tournament. The answers from players have been respectful. Coaches have been mindful of perspective. Calhoun, a liberal Democrat, opposed the Vietnam War in his 20s. Now a grandfather who recently overcame prostate cancer, his value of life has never been more acute. He has called Saddam Hussein a "brutal dictator" and "tyrant" in recent days, but his feelings are clearly torn. One minute he was joking about a jealous Texas coach Rick Barnes walking over to examine his 1999 national championship ring, the next his face drew long when he heard about Phil Jordan's young son, Tyler.

"This game in San Antonio, these games we're playing this month, they should be played," Calhoun said. "But I think all of us, we're really hoping for a quick resolution. I mean, I'm watching CNN at 2 o'clock in the morning, thinking about this. I'm not one of those guys who feel you can go to war and do it for five days, but there's just too many people getting killed, too many deaths. And when it's all said and done, how much have we changed the world? I hope we have. But I'm not sure we will.

"There's just got to be some way humanly possible to stop this. With all our technology, there's got to be a way we can end this war as quickly as we possibly can."

After Jordan's biological mom left when he was 2, he was raised by his father and stepmother. His dad died of a heart attack at 42, and his stepmother was killed by a drunken driver. He went to live with his grandmother, and she died within a year. He was a ward of the state at 13. He lived in foster homes. He went to Furr High in Houston. He went to Alvin High. He graduated from Clear Creek High in League City.

He was a living, breathing excuse to be a delinquent.

He became one of our finest.

He could have died in his 20s, when he had Hodgkin's disease.

He lived to be a hero.

It is no more than a 15-minute walk from the tiny Alamo to the giant Alamodome, and nowhere in America is there a stranger disparity in size. If an alien from another solar system landed in San Antonio, surely he would think sports is 20 times the size of war. And most of the time in American society it is, but not now. The Marines did not fight the Mexicans at the Alamo, but they did a few years later in the Mexican War, thus the famous lyrics, "From the Halls of Montezuma ..."

These are the words Jordan marched to in Desert Storm and Kosovo. The Jordans moved to Connecticut about a year ago so Amanda could be close to her parents. He had been a drill sergeant at Parris Island, and he knew war could call again. It did, and now a little boy, 6, a son who loves to wear his Marines T-shirt missed his dad.

The outpouring of support has been strong, and Paretzky mentioned a letter from the widow of Tech Sgt. John Chapman, who was killed in Afghanistan, as especially touching the family. For their part, the UConn and Texas teams are both autographing basketballs and will send them to Tyler. The token is a small one. But some day when he grows to be as big a man as his dad, he will realize this was the night when two state universities, two basketball teams fighting for a national title, took the time to realize there is only one hero from Texas and Connecticut.

E-mail: jjacobs@courant.com

Mourners turn out to honor fallen Marine
March 27, 2003
Associated Press

ENFIELD, Conn. -- A small gathering for peace at Asnuntuck Community College Wednesday night became an unofficial vigil for the first Connecticut soldier to die in the war in Iraq.

The Wednesday night rally had been planned for nearly a week, said Martha McLeod, the college's president.

Marine Staff Sgt. Phillip Jordan, who recently moved to Enfield from Texas, was killed in an ambush Sunday when Iraqi soldiers pretending to surrender opened fire. Eight other Marines were killed.

Wednesday's vigil took on new meaning after Jordan's death.

"Suddenly all these calls started coming in," McLeod said. "I was surprised, but the connection between everyone there was very obvious."

About 100 people tried to shield their candles from the rain on the college's front lawn.

Jordan was 42 and had served in the 1991 Gulf War. He moved to Enfield so his wife, Amanda, and their 6-year-old son, Tyler, could be near her family in Connecticut.

Amanda Jordan said her son lived for his father.

"For Tyler, he'll never be able to look back at his dad," said state Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, who has a son close to Tyler's age.

Veterans groups turned out for the vigil, which dispersed early after less than an hour because of the rain.

Earlier in the day, Gov. John G. Rowland ordered flags flown at half staff in honor of Jordan.

"With a very heavy heart, Enfield loses a proud military man," Kissel said.
END