May those of us who were not blessed to know Marine Corporal Kevin Kolm who was killed last week in the brutal fighting in Iraq salute this heroic son of Hicksville, this young man who gave his life so others may celebrate theirs. His mother and father gave their son not only to Hicksville and the United States of America, but also to the world and to the oddly defined War on Terror. We salute his parents. Parents, like sons, define the word "hero."

Before traveling to that far off land, which most of us know only from news reports, Kevin was a son of Hicksville Middle School and Hicksville High School. He was a son of the carpentry trade and the local community college. He became our son who joined the Marines to continue a family tradition and to make his own mark on the world.

On Wednesday, April 21, friends, family and strangers of compassion gathered at the Vernon C. Wagner Funeral Home to pay their respects to this gallant young man while the headlines screamed of suicide car bombings, interruptions in the cease-fire, school children killed and attacks on U.S. Marines. We are left to live in the world Kevin fought to save. May he rest in the peace he fought to bring to us.

Mary Ellen Potter Porrazzo