43
1983 bombing in Beiruit leaves lasting impact on local families on families in valleys
‘You never forget it. You try to, but you can’t,’ said a parent of a Marine killed in the terrorist attack.
STRUTHERS — Ed and Mary Ann Johnston drive by the Peace Keepers Memorial in Struthers and Lake Park Cemetery in Youngstown nearly every day to “check things” and “maybe clean up a little.”
Shirley Kirkwood adds: “If I can get through the holidays, I’m pretty good.”
The Johnstons and Kirkwood, then Shirley McDonough, are among the local residents who lost sons and husbands when a terrorist truck bomb destroyed the Marine Corps’ 1st Battalion, 8th Marines Headquarters Building in Beirut, Lebanon, the morning of Oct. 23, 1983.
Twenty-five years later, they are still dealing with the loss of their loved ones.
“You never forget it. You try to, but you can’t,” Johnston said.
The explosion and the collapse of the building killed 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers, including 220 Marines, 14 of whom were from Ohio, and three from the Mahoning and Shenango valleys.
Area Marines killed were:
ULance Cpl. Edward A. Johnston of Struthers, son of Edwin and Mary Ann Johnston of Struthers and husband of Mary Lynn Buckner of Vienna.
ULance Cpl. Stanley Sliwinski of Niles.
USgt. James E. McDonough, son of Shirley McDonough Kirkwood and the late Edward McDonough of New Castle, Pa.
The Peace Keepers Memorial, unveiled Oct. 22, 1989, on the shores of Lake Hamilton as a tribute to the 14 Ohio Marines killed, was the site Sunday of a memorial service commemorating the 25th anniversary of their deaths. The service was conducted by the Tri-State Detachment of the Marine Corps League. The memorial is on state Route 616 (Poland Avenue) between Hamilton Boulevard and Fifth Street.
Johnston, 22 when he was killed, is buried in the military section of Lake Park Cemetery. Besides his parents, he left his wife and a 2-year-old daughter, Alicia, who is now married and living in Kentucky; and siblings, Mary Ann Beck and Charles Johnston, both living in Michigan.
“He wasn’t supposed to be in the barracks. He’d told us in a letter he was scheduled to be on maneuvers. We didn’t find out until two weeks after the bombing that he had been killed,” Johnston said of his son.
The Johnstons have a close relationship with their son’s wife and daughter, and said the two daughters from Mary Lynn’s re-marriage to Richard Buckner “are like granddaughters.”
“Nobody shut anybody out,” Johnston said.
“The time has gone fast, but it seems like yesterday. It’s hard to explain,” he added.
Johnston said he is “kind of hurt” that other people seem to be forgetting.
“It’s the veterans [forgetting] that hurts the most. But I’d probably be doing the same thing if it wasn’t my son,” Johnston said.
He described his son, who played football at Struthers High School where he graduated in 1978, as “happy-go-lucky until he became a man. He loved the Marine Corps.”
“You never forget,” said Mary Lynn.
She said the memorial services are important reminders to people of what happened. “We don’t have the luxury of forgetting,” she said of the people who lost loved ones in the attack.
“It was a devastating and life-changing experience, but my daughter kept me going and Eddy’s family. I adore that whole family. They are a living part of Eddy,” she said.
“I often think of the Vietnam veterans and my heart breaks for them. But if I hadn’t gone through this, maybe I wouldn’t understand either,” Mary Lynn said.
McDonough, 21 when he was killed, was always bringing people home when he was in high school and in the service, said his mother.
“I’d wake up in the morning and there would be boys sleeping everywhere. I cooked my head off,” she said, smiling in remembrance.
He often brought home friends from the Marine Corps, including a couple of guys from the Dominican Republic, explaining that they “didn’t have anyplace else to go.”
McDonough graduated from Shenango High School in New Castle in 1980 and enlisted in the Marine Corps later that year.
“James was MIA [missing in action] for a week after the bombing,” said his brother, Edward of Pittsburgh, who was in the Army stationed at Fort Sill, Okla., at the time. Another brother, Sean McDonough of Thibadaoux, La., served in the Army Reserve.
McDonough’s sisters are Sally Wirick of Pittsburgh, Kathy McDonald of Marionville, Pa., and Shirley Pettery of Follansbee, W.Va.
“My husband [Carl Kirkwood] and I heard about the bombing watching television at my daughter’s home in Pittsburgh. We hoped and prayed. When the Marine Corps guys came to the door, I didn’t want to let them in,” Mrs. Kirkwood said. James is buried in Oak Park Cemetery in New Castle.
“Jimmy” liked to hunt and fish. He and his Air Force buddy planned on starting a house-painting company when they got out of the service, she said.
“We have a big family. He’s still missed real bad at the gatherings at home,” Mrs. Kirkwood said of her son.
“We fought like cats and dogs until we joined the service, until we grew up. It really bothers me to this day that he was taken away from me,” said McDonough’s brother Ed, who was two years younger.
The Johnston and Kirkwood families planned to attend the memorial service Sunday in Struthers and also to travel to Jacksonville, N.C., near the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune, to attend the national 25th Beirut Remembrance on Oct. 23.
The memorial services are important reminders to people of what happened. “We don’t have the luxury of forgetting,” Mary Lynn said.
alcorn@vindy.com