Oregonians grieve loss
of Kaneohe Marine, 24

ROSEBURG, Ore. » About 1,000 friends, family members and strangers gathered Thursday to remember Kaneohe Marine Cpl. James Lee Moore, killed last week in a helicopter crash in Iraq. It would have been his 25th birthday.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski told mourners that all Oregonians grieved the loss of Moore, the first Douglas County resident killed in the war.

American and Marine Corps flags flanked the casket at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

The 1999 Roseburg High School graduate was killed along with 29 other Marines and a Pearl Harbor Navy corpsman when their helicopter crashed in bad weather while they were being flown to provide security for last Sunday's elections.

Moore, along with 25 other Marines killed in the accident, had been based at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay. He had been in Iraq since July.

Kulongoski, a former Marine who has attended memorial services for every Oregon soldier killed in the war, read the names of nine other Oregon Marines killed in action.

He praised Moore for enlisting following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and called those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan "Oregon's best."

"Our hearts break with you and our prayers go with you. I promise we will never forget what James Moore meant to you," Kulongoski said.

Karen Goirigolzarri, Roseburg High School principal, moderated the service and drew a laugh when she said she remembered seeing Moore in the office "quite a bit."

She described him as hard-working, independent and a person who believed in doing the right thing.

"After 9/11 that compassion for helping his family expanded to the nation," Goirigolzarri said.

Soldiers outside the hall gave a 21-gun salute.

"It's nice to see the support the community has given this family," said Brig. Gen. Raymond Byrne, acting adjutant general of the Oregon National Guard.

A portion of Moore's cremated remains was to be placed next to his grandfather, Jesse "Alvin" Moore, with the rest spread on a hillside in Douglas County.

Kulongoski quoted from former President Abraham Lincoln, who wrote a letter to Lydia Bixby, a Boston woman who lost five sons in the Civil War. "I pray that our heavenly father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and the lost," he read.