By Jeff Mullin Senior Writer
Marine Staff Sgt. John Stock didn’t have to be in Iraq. His unit was considered non-deployable.
So Stock, a Longview, Texas, native, volunteered to move to a deployable one.
His second deployment to Iraq, which began in March, was supposed to end in October, when he could return home to his wife, Lindsey, and two children.
But Stock, 26, died Thursday while manning a traffic checkpoint in western Anbar Province, the victim of a suicide bomber. He was 26. He was one of four Marines and three soldiers killed Thursday in Iraq.
He leaves behind not only his wife, 8-year-old stepson, Levin, and 9-month-old son, Wyatt, but his parents, four sisters and a brother.
One of those sisters, Erin, works for the city of Enid in the code administration office and is the wife of Jeremy Barnes, district executive for Cimarron Council, Boy Scouts of America.
Barnes said the family was doing about as well as could be expected in the wake of the loss.
“We are still kind of in that dreamy state, like it’s not really real,” Barnes said.
Jeremy and Erin Barnes have only been married for about a year.
“I am learning how to be a husband,” he said.
Barnes described his brother-in-law as “real bullheaded, when he wanted something he went after it.”
Stock wanted to serve in Iraq and thus volunteered to be deployed from Camp Pendleton, Calif. He was a member of the 2nd Marine Division, 3rd Battalion Bravo Company.
“The family said, ‘We support you 100 percent if this is what you want to do,’” said Barnes. “He had a lot of courage. I don’t know if I could have done what he did in volunteering to go.”
Stock was an Eagle Scout and a member of the varsity swim team at Longview High School.
“I hope people know this is happening,” Barnes said about the war. “People that actually care are over there caring regardless of what the status of the (Iraqi) government is. They are doing what they think is right.”
A rosary in Stock’s honor was recited Friday evening at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Longview. Plans for his funeral are pending.
