A Great Falls family has another reason to be proud of their son. Brendan Geraghty, who graduated from high school a year early and joined the Marines at 17, was recently involved in a special ceremony in Afghanistan, commemorating the 229th anniversary of the Marine Corps.
“He’s a very good skier and snowboarder. We thought he’d go somewhere cold for a while. He’s an outdoorsman,” said Norah Geraghty, Brendan’s mother.
He has been stationed in Afghanistan since mid-September. His mother said her second-eldest son “developed an interest in joining the Marines shortly before he enlisted.”
“He made the decision to join when he was 16 and graduated high school (Emerson Prep. in Washington) a year early, when he was 17, and enlisted right away,” said his father, Peter.
The ceremony, held sometime last month, involved the oldest Marine at each base handing a piece of birthday cake to the youngest Marine at the camp, the Geraghtys said.
“If it were up to him, he probably wouldn’t have said anything,” Peter Geraghty said. “We found out about the ceremony through a contact we have at the (American) Embassy in Kabul.”
“They performed this ceremony all over the world. Dick Armitage (deputy secretary of state) was at his base, as were many three-star generals,” Norah Geraghty said. “He never said much about the ceremony, just that it was amazing. I think he thought it would be a little more low key, but there were 3,000 soldiers there.”
SHE HAPPENS TO HAVE a friend stationed at the American Embassy in Kabul, who gets to see Brendan on a somewhat regular basis while he’s standing duty on the base.
“He’s working on a project to construct the Embassy. When my friend told me where she was working, I couldn’t believe she worked near him. It’s like having an angel on my shoulder, watching out for him,” she said. “We had to laugh about it. My husband said to Brendan, ‘Only your mother would find someone in Afghanistan to check up on you.’”
“Leave it to a mother to figure it out,” she said.
“This kind of story is more likely to happen living in this area than anywhere else in the country,” Peter Geraghty said. “It’s quite fortuitous. It’s very helpful to have a contact there because he’s more likely to e-mail his buddies than us when he gets a chance. It’s good to know there’s someone looking after him there.”
“He was always a pretty independent guy who had his own ideas about what he wanted to do,” said Robert Hires, a family friend, who lives in New Hampshire. “I wasn’t surprised when he decided to join the Marines. He had a talk with my cousin, Chris Lovejoy, a major in the Marines, before he decided to sign up.”
Hires said he was surprised by a phone call from Brendan a few weeks ago, telling him about the ceremony.
“It had been a few weeks since I’d gotten a call from Kabul,” he said with a laugh. “He was excited about the ceremony. He’s matured a lot in the past year.”
As the second oldest of six boys, Brendan has inspired a lot of respect and enthusiasm in his younger brothers.
“The ceremony when he graduated from basic training at Parris Island (S.C.) was very moving. His youngest brothers, 6 and 8 (years old) know what’s going on, and they’re very proud of him. They think it’s very cool, what happened to him,” Peter Geraghty said.
“We’re all just so proud of him,” Norah Geraghty said. “For our younger boys, everything is about the Marines. ... They all talk about joining up when they’re old enough, and if they do decide to join, we’ll support them.”
The Geraghtys said they hear from their son once every week or so and keep in contact with him via e-mails and phone calls, sometimes coming at 5 a.m., which means waking up their youngest boys to talk with their brother. They hope Brendan might come home on leave early next year.