After five years of service as a Marine, Cpl. Philip Marconi has come home to stay.
His journey into the armed forces started right after high school at Kenmore West, where he played shortstop for the baseball team. Following graduation, Marconi said he was looking for a new adventure and wanted to do something important. That led him to the Marines.
“Most people look at the Marines as the toughest, the guys that go in first,” Marconi said. “I figured if I’m going to join, I might as well go big.”
He landed in boot camp at the end of 2003. There he found boot is a largely uncertain time for young Marines, who aren’t sure where they’ll be stationed and if they’ll soon be seeing life-threatening combat situations. Marconi said seeking some sense of stability led him to become a religious lay reader.
“There were no religious services for Catholics, so at the end of the night to kind of bring us together I’d just say a couple of prayers,” Marconi said. “I stepped up and took that role to try to bring some spirituality.”
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After boot camp, Marconi did two tours in Iraq, his first in Fallujah. Marconi’s unit came into town to relieve the troops who retook the city in 2005 and were charged with making sure people moving back in weren’t up to no good. The soldiers were also helping to rebuild schools and hospitals that were destroyed during the retaking.
“You see all the bad stuff on the news, but you don’t see a lot of the good stuff we got to do,” Marconi said.
His second trip overseas put him in Ramadi, where his unit was charged with helping train the Iraqi security forces. When Marconi was asked to lead a squad on his third and final deployment, to Afghanistan, it was an entirely different experience.
“It almost brings you back to the Before Christ era,” Marconi said. “People have never heard of household electricity or anything like that. The closest they had was that they use flashlights at night.”
He said seeing 5-year-old children working 10 hour says seven days a week made him appreciate how lucky Americans are. Now that he’s back home in Kenmore, Marconi is looking to get into college, maybe starting at Erie Community College to get some of his basic credits out of the way.
“I’m very interested in sports, so I’m hoping to get into a good school with a sports journalism or communications program,” Marconi said.
Contact reporter Daniel Pye at 693-1000, ext. 158.
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