27960: Hermantin(news)Marine recalled with pride

[corbetre@webster.edu]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami Herald

Posted on Tue, Feb. 21, 2006


NORTH MIAMI-DADE
Marine recalled with pride
A Marine killed in training accident in Africa last week was raised in
Northside and graduated from Miami Central Senior High.
By LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com

There is great sadness tempered by pride today for the family of a North
Miami-Dade Marine killed last week during a training accident off the coast
of Africa.

Cpl. Matthieu Marcellus, 31, a 1992 graduate of Miami Central High School
who grew up in Northside with his three brothers and sisters, was among the
eight Marines and two airmen who died when two helicopters collided in
mid-air in northern Djibouti. Marcellus was stationed there as part of the
Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, a counter-terrorism unit. Only two
survived.

''My brother would not want us to be sad because he was doing what he
loved,'' said one of Marcellus' sisters, Ruth Marcellus-Hanchell, of Tampa.

``No one was prouder than Matthieu to be a Marine. He loved the uniform and
he was very happy to be doing what he was doing. We find great comfort in
that and in the knowledge that he is in a better place.''

Marcellus leaves behind his wife, Donna Marie, who also served overseas,
where they met. Marcellus, a technician, was assigned to the Marine Heavy
Helicopter Squadron 464, Marine Air Group 29, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, II
Marine Expeditionary Force in New River, N.C.

The family is preparing for Marcellus' funeral Saturday in Tampa, where his
mother, Marie, and another sister, Esther, also live. His father, Jacques,
lives in Sunrise and his brother, Jacob, resides in Miramar.

Marcellus-Hanchell said serving in the military was ''a calling'' along with
flying. ''Going fast, flying, racing cars, he loved all that,'' she said.
``Being in the helicopter where he died was what he wanted to be doing.''

Marcellus, the son of Haitian immigrants who settled in New York before
moving to Miami when he was 10, moved to Gainesville, where his first wife
attended college, in the late 1990s. There, he had worked as an assistant
manager at Toys 'R' Us before joining the military. Marcellus was last in
South Florida in April 2005 for a family get-together. ''He was going to be
deployed soon and I had a new baby,'' Marcellus-Hanchell said. It was the
week of the McDonald's Air & Sea show in Fort Lauderdale. ``It was
perfect.''

The accident that killed Marcellus and the others occured when two CH-53E
choppers, carrying a dozen crew and troops, went down during a training
flight Friday in the Gulf of Aden, near the northern coastal town of Ras
Siyyan.

Marcellus' body, and those of the others killed, were flown Sunday to Dover
Air Base in Delaware.

Following Saturday's funeral service, Marcellus' remains will be taken to
North Carolina, his family said.


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