Family members recount memories of lost loved ones
The state has the fourth-largest number of deaths since the war began.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- The cashier became emotional and speechless when war protester Joseph Mosyjowski bought 2,000 small candles a few weeks ago for a vigil he knew was bound to happen, and she realized they represented each U.S. military death in Iraq.
As she silently scanned each candle, the reality hit: "2,000 stories of 2,000 people whose lives have been cut short through the violence of a war of choice," Mosyjowski said Wednesday before a series of anti-war vigils in Ohio and nationwide marking this week's milestone.
For Tiphany Eckert, whose 24-year-old husband, Andy Eckert, was killed by a roadside bomb in May, the number makes no difference.
"Every life that's lost is just as significant as the one that was lost yesterday and the one that will be lost tomorrow," she said. "It's every time we lose someone that it hits home."
A grim milestone
On Tuesday, 31 months after the start of the war in March 2003, the U.S. military death toll hit 2,000. The number of Iraqi civilians killed since the war began is estimated at 30,000, according to experts.
The number grew Wednesday when the Defense Department said a 12-year Marine Corps veteran from Cincinnati was Ohio's 94th casualty of the war.
Capt. Tyler Swisher, 35, was killed by a roadside bomb Friday in Al Anbar Province. A Marine corporal also was killed in the explosion that the military says threw them from their vehicle and into a canal.
Before Swisher's death was announced, Ohio was tied with New York for the war's fourth worst death toll. California had lost the most -- 216, followed by Texas with 181 and Pennsylvania with 103.
Stories of lives cut short
Army Pvt. Brandon Sloan, 19, of Bedford Heights, and Army Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, of Cleveland, were the first Ohioans to lose their lives in Iraq. Their 507th Maintenance Company's supply convoy was ambushed in late March 2003, just days after the war began. Both were originally listed as missing until their bodies were found later.
"Nobody could ask for a better husband in the world than him," Dowdy's wife, Kathy, said sobbing shortly after his death. She and a teenage daughter were left to a life without him in DeRidder, La.
Also among the 2,000 is Marine Staff Sgt. Kendall Ivy II, 29, who died in May after suffering a severe leg wound when the vehicle he was riding in struck a roadside bomb in Iraq.
"Each and every one of these fine young men and women is in a dangerous situation," Ivy's brother, Kevin Ivy, 42, of Galion, north of Columbus, said Wednesday. "But my brother understood that, and he was willing to lay down his life for the cause of freeing these people."
It was just two months ago that Ohioans faced an especially heartbreaking reminder of the human price of the war. The Brook Park-based 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines lost 16 members, including 14 killed in back-to-back attacks within a week. The tragedy inspired impromptu hometown memorials honoring the fallen and refueled war protests across the state.
Kathy Dyer, the mother of one of those Marines, called on mourners at her son's funeral to not let his death turn them against the U.S. fight in Iraq.
"Honor me in this way," she said at the service for her son, Lance Cpl. Christopher J. Dyer, 19, of the Cincinnati suburb of Evendale.
Eckert has a 2-year-old daughter and a 7-month-old son and lives in Sylvania, a Toledo suburb. She said what hurts most is not being able to share with her husband the excitement of their son's first words or his three new teeth.