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Third Minnesota Marine this week dies in Iraq
by Bob Kelleher, Minnesota Public Radio
April 9, 2004

A flag on the front yard of Cloquet resident Nick Burggraff is lowered in honor of a local Marine, killed in Iraq this week. (MPR Photo/Bob Kelleher)

Cloquet residents learned today that 20-year-old Marine Corps Corporal Levi Angell was killed Thursday on the outskirts of Baghdad. His Humvee was reportedly hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Angell was the third Marine from Carlton County to die recently in the Persian Gulf. His death leaves friends asking why; and others asking why small towns -- like Cloquet -- are bearing such a burden among the casualties.

Cloquet, Minn. — Levi Angell's friends describe him as a nice guy, and a smart kid. He might not have hit the highest grades, but he had a kind of a street smarts, according to Stephanie Kolodge. She and Levi were classmates and close friends. She remembers Levi as a fun kid - the kind of person anyone would want to be around.

"He was one of those kids that was just nice to everyone; just a nice person who didn't care what anyone thought of him. He was so much fun. He's the life of everywhere he went. Everyone was friends with him," she said.

Lance Cpl. Angell was killed Thursday in Abu Ghurayb, on the western outskirts of Baghdad and on the road to Fallujah when his Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Angell was also the third Marine from Carlton County to die in the Persian Gulf region in the past two months.

He was the son of Loretta and Gordon Angell Jr. He was the second-oldest of their five children together and one of eight children in the family.

"It's not easy," Loretta Angell said.

She said her son was on his second tour of duty in the Gulf region. He had been in Kuwait before and had just volunteered to go to Iraq, where he drove military transports.

His grandmother, Lila Angell, also of Cloquet, said her grandson joined the Marines shortly after graduating from Cloquet High School in 2002.

Angell liked to play basketball, not on the teams, but just for fun. And he and was on the high school chess team. Kolodge last saw Levi over Christmas, the night before he was heading to the Marine Corp Base at Camp Pendleton -- the first step to Iraq.

"He was proud to serve our country. He talked about it all the time; when he was going, and stuff. And he was excited he was in it. He was glad he was going over there," she said.

High School Principal Warren Peterson recalls Levi as a person with a lot of good friends. He was in choir, and in drama his play went to state competition.

"He was kind of a quiet kid who just had a really had a neat sense of humor. Very kind. Sometimes you hear that, but in four years I've never seen a malicious bone in his body," Peterson said.

"He wanted to support his country, and this was the best way he felt that he could do it."

You can see the patriotism in Cloquet, a town of 11,000 residents, built largely around a paper mill. You can see it in Nick Burggraff's lawn. His front yard flag pole towers over the trees. Today, his flag is lowered to half staff. Burggraff is a World War II combat veteran. He worries about the way this war is going.

"Like every day I get up, we turn the radio on, and that's about the first thing I do and see how many boys did get killed. And it's real hard this last week and that, you know. Yeah, I'm worried about it," he said.

The loss of three soldiers is a shock for Carlton County. The county's population of 32,000 would only fill a modest city. It may be that small towns are bearing a disproportionate burden of casualties.

Robert Cushing, a Texas sociologist has looked at the numbers.

"It's not just small towns, but what we're finding is there's an overrepresentation of the casualties from small towns to far away from metropolitan areas," he said.

Cushing says rural areas have about 19 percent of the nation's population, but soldiers from rural areas make up about a third of the nation's losses. Cushing says rural people may be drawn to the military for economic gain.

"It's a way out," he said. "A lot of these towns aren't growing. The Army in particular has presented itself in the past as a place where opportunities could be made. But there are no jobs in town, so what are the options?"

Cushing says the Midwest is over represented in the number of war deaths. He doesn't know why.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was also thinking about the rising body count. He says it's appropriate to ask what we're doing, why we're in Iraq, and what's the end game? But the governor says people need to steel themselves for the long haul. He says the war won't be over quickly and it won't be over easily. He says America needs "to stand tough."

"We cannot send the message to the terrorists and the international community, that if you cause us difficulty, you cut and run. We just can't do that," said Pawlenty on MPR's Midday.

Pawlenty expressed his condolences to the families of each of the three Minnesotan Marines killed this week.

Funerals will be held soon for the three, 20-year old Lance Corporal Levi Angell of Cloquet, 19-year-old Private First Class Moises Langhorst of Moose Lake and 22-year-old Corporal Tyler Fey of Eden Prairie.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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