More than 4,400 service members have been killed in the Iraq War. One of those killed was a Kaneohe Marine named Stephen Morris who fell in love with a local girl before his deployment. Their story of love and hope is shared in a new novel, "Because He Loved."
Lacey Vasquez still remembers his smile. She was a student at Hawaii Pacific University when she met Marine Lance Corporal Stephen Morris on Mother’s Day in 2006.
"Just doing my own thing and then suddenly you know I met this man who I was going to spend the rest of my life with," she said.
The Waialua graduate fell hard for Morris, a native of Florida who was stationed at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe. He was a spiritual man who loved to surf. In September the 21-year-old Marine was deployed to Iraq.
"I was just really in love with this man and I looked forward to him calling me," she recalled.
But on Christmas Eve 2006 their fairy tale romance came to an end.
"On Christmas he was going to call me again, of course to say Merry Christmas but he didn’t," she said. "His dad called me instead and told me that Stephen was killed."
The pain was piercing.
"My whole future was ahead of me with this man and just in a second just with a phone call and just have that completely just torn away from you it’s like how could I ever love somebody again after just feeling that," said Vasquez. "It’s like you don’t want to risk loving anybody again."
She tried to find comfort in remembering.
"It takes a lot to plan a future when you know that one you already planned was just taken away," said Vasquez. "That’s made me write I didn’t want him to ever be forgotten, never."
"Because He Loved" is her way of expressing hope.
"It’s take courage, it’s takes courage to say I love you to anybody after that," she said.
And she learned to say I love you again when she met Jonathan Vasquez, a Navy hospital corpsman who coincidentally was also injured in battle.
"The same deployment actually that Stephen was killed in, my husband got shot in the back."
In 2009 they were married; her journey to love again was complete.
"You have to let of the past and you have to hold on to hope, it’s the only thing that we have," said Vasquez.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
