Catholic family remembers U.S. Marine killed in Iraq as 'dad' first

HONOLULU, Hawaii (Hawaii Catholic Herald) - Before he was deployed to Iraq this past August, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Joseph Trane McCloud made sure to spend a "Daddy Day" with each of his three children.

He and son Hayden, 7, went to Hanauma Bay. He and 5-year-old Grace went bowling and had dinner at Sizzler. And he took 2-year-old Meghan to the movies. McCloud, who had arrived in Hawaii several months before his wife and kids to serve with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, also made sure that the family's Kaneohe Marine Corps Base home was spruced up before they came in July. He painted, fixed up the bedrooms and even built Hayden a loft bed. "He was this consummate Marine but, oh Lord, was he a dad," said his wife of more than 12 years, Maggie McCloud. "And he was ready to be a dad from the moment I met him." The man who served his country and loved his family, was killed Dec. 3, just 11 days before his 40th birthday, when the helicopter he was in crash landed on Lake Qadisiyah in Al Anbar Province in western Iraq shortly after taking off from Haditha Dam. Trane, as he was known to family and friends, was described as bringing out the best in other people while humbly going about life with "quiet dignity." "I am so proud of my husband and the job that he did. And I am so proud of every Marine and soldier and sailor over there doing their job," McCloud said. "Whatever you think of the war, we owe them all a debt of gratitude." McCloud describes herself as just "one of many" who have lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. To date, more than 3,100 military members have died in Iraq alone. "You read in the newspaper about the war and about people dying and those numbers," she said. "But until you know someone and until it's somebody that you're in the neighborhood with, or they go to your church, or they go to your school, or your paths cross, it almost doesn't seem real." Memorial Mass A memorial Mass for Trane McCloud was celebrated on Feb. 9 in St. Anthony Church in Kailua where the McCloud's two oldest children, Hayden and Grace, are enrolled in the parish school. A letter that Lt. Col. McCloud mailed to Hayden's second grade class from Iraq was read aloud during the Mass. In the note, dated Nov. 10, the Marine thanked the students for the pictures and letters they had sent him, told them the weather had recently cooled down from 120 degree days, and wrote, "You are all very lucky to live in a country that is free and safe." After the Mass, with the whole school watching, a puakinikini tree was planted and blessed in the school courtyard with a plaque next to it bearing Trane McCloud's name. Then Maggie, Hayden and Grace released rainbow-colored pigeons and one white dove. Hayden asked if he could water the tree. The McClouds will stay in Hawaii through the end of the school year before returning to Virginia. Maggie said that after Trane was buried at Arlington National Cemetery it was an easy decision to return with her kids to the islands, and St. Anthony's in particular, because "I can't imagine them being anywhere else especially in light of what has happened to our family." It was Lt. Col. McCloud who encouraged Maggie to pick St. Anthony's for the two older children's school after talking to another Marine father who had a child enrolled there. Though he himself was Protestant, Trane married Maggie in a Catholic ceremony and they raised their children as Catholics. Maggie McCloud says her husband always had a can-do attitude in all aspects of his life, whether it was leading troops or his son's Little League team. "There was no problem too great," she said, mentioning that she has heard about the work McCloud did in Iraq as a battalion operations officer. "He traveled to this place and what people had been working on for days and saying they couldn't do, he would not accept no for an answer. And he himself fixed this particular problem." "That was also his faith in God," she said. "He's put us here. He'll show us the way. And I will strive to instill that in my children." "He did his job and I will do mine and I will raise these kids in a way that he will be proud of." McCloud's positive attitude included leading a marathon team, taking apart computers to learn how they worked, teaching himself how to make video compilations set to music, and especially tinkering with cars. Trane purchased his dream car, a pink and black 1959 Ford Fairlane several years ago. He made sure the back seat had room for three car-seats for his kids. Maggie McCloud recalls all the fun times the family had in the Ford, like driving to get Krispy Kreme donuts or ice cream with Elvis blasting on the radio. And Trane was always finding something to refurbish or fix with it. A life of service Trane McCloud was born in Tennessee and lived in Atlanta and later the Detroit area growing up. He excelled at football in elementary and high school. He graduated with a history major from the University of Tennessee in 1989 and enlisted in the Marine Corps. In 1990 he was deployed during Operation Desert Storm on the USS Missouri -- a ship he'd built a model of as a kid and dreamed of one day being on -- as a member of the famed battleship's final crew before it was decommissioned and docked in Pearl Harbor. After Desert Storm, McCloud went to officer training school in Virginia where he met Maggie Hayden, who was working on Capitol Hill. They were married two years later. In 1992, as a young lieutenant he was deployed to Bosnia and Somalia. It was there that he became close friends with a fellow lieutenant Rod Jetton, who is today Speaker of the Missouri State House of Representatives. Jetton recalled his good friend in several "Capitol Report" letters last December. In one he said that he and McCloud "dreaded the thought of having to write a letter home to the parents of one of our men if we would have lost someone" in Somalia. In another he wrote, "This is a guy who prayed before every meal, never lost his cool, always had good advice, and never had to be the center of attention." After several promotions, Trane went back to school and earned a master's degree in broadcast journalism from American University and worked as a public affairs officer. But he most enjoyed being in the field with his men. His first Hawaii assignment was in 2000 when Hayden was not yet two. Grace was born here in 2001 while McCloud was deployed to Okinawa. After Sept. 11, he was part of a security force in the Philippines. In 2003, he was accepted as a Military Fellow in Washington, D.C., and worked for a year in South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson's office. McCloud played an integral part in the passing of a loan reduction bill for college graduates who worked in inner city or low-income area schools. After working at the Pentagon and other assignments, McCloud was anxious to serve with a deploying infantry battalion in Iraq. He was assigned again to Hawaii in April 2006 and prepared to go overseas, but made sure he had time to surf and golf, something he hadn't been able to do on his last deployment in the islands. Maggie McCloud says that in Iraq her husband was "mission-focused" and that she "will always take great comfort in the fact that he was doing exactly what he wanted to be doing." "He believed whole-heartedly in what the Marines were doing over there," she said. "Even if somehow he'd had a crystal ball and he'd known that this was going to happen, he would have gone." McCloud's mother, Roma Anderson, said that in one of his e-mails to her, Trane wrote, "Mom, the Iraqi people do not deserve to live in the fear they live in." And in a group e-mail to family and friends McCloud thanked everyone for their support of him and his family. "I visualize [Trane as] this ship flowing through the waters and touching all over, but not by show, but by his reserve," Anderson said.

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Republished with permission by Catholic Online from the Hawaii Catholic Herald (www.hawaiicatholicherald.com), official publication of the Diocese of Honolulu (Hawaii).