Thursday, June 23, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Slain Las Vegas Marine 'a loving guy'

Twin brother recalls his 'inseparable' youth with victim of bomb attack in Iraq

Jesse Jaime Marine died last week on street near Ramadi, Iraq Mercedes Acosta, right, aunt of Jesse Jaime, hugs an unidentified woman Wednesday by the casket of Cpl. Jesse Jaime at Palm Mortuary. Photo by John Locher. Mercedes Acosta, left, and Joel Jaime talk Wednesday as they walk away from the casket of Marine Cpl. Jesse Jaime, who was killed in action last week in Iraq. Photo by John Locher.

Freedom has never come easy for the Jaime family.

Ricardo Jaime fled Fidel Castro's communist Cuba 25 years ago with 125,000 other refugees who took boats from the port of Mariel to Key West, Fla.

He settled in Las Vegas and married Iliana, whose family had fled Cuba, too. They had twins, Jesse and Joel, who in February left with the same Marine company to fight the war in Iraq.

On Wednesday, while his mother, father and relatives stared at a flag-draped casket, Joel stood in the hallway at Palm Mortuary and talked about life with his brother.

In a quiet but steady voice, he told how Jesse died June 15 in Operation Iraqi Freedom when a homemade bomb blew up a Humvee carrying five Marines on a street near Ramadi.

"He was a loving guy, always happy. He always made people laugh," said Joel Jaime, 22, of Henderson.

"Me and my brother were inseparable," he said. "He was the nicer one. I was the meaner one."

Joel did not express bitterness about what happened. Instead he spoke about what the Marines stand for and why they help others fight for freedom overseas.

"To join the Marines, it's a rite of passage," he said, noting later: "He joined the Marines for me."

The twins were born May 3, 1983, in Las Vegas. Their dad worked as a bar janitor and landscaper, their mother as a waitress in casinos.

The boys had many childhood friends, Joel said. "My friends were his friends. It was like we were six brothers."

The Jaime boys attended Harmon Elementary School, Woodbury Middle School and Chaparral High School. They often played football and street hockey.

"He was more the hard hitter. He'd always run head-into people. ... He loved hockey. He loved Wayne Gretzky," Joel said.

The twins were never in the same classes together except once in a high school Spanish class.

They both participated in the Navy Junior ROTC program at Chaparral, where they graduated in 2001.

"He joined first and motivated me to join," Joel said about Junior ROTC. "He was more into it than me. He was on the drill team and in physical fitness."

For a short while after high school, they went separate ways, with Joel joining the Marines and Jesse attending a technical school in Phoenix.

"I enlisted, and he turned his mind toward college," Joel said. "He was way more intelligent than I was. He'd read a lot."

But it wasn't long until Joel got a letter at boot camp from Jesse that said he was dropping out of college to join the Marines.

"He wanted to be in the infantry," Joel said.

While Jesse trained with security forces and anti-terrorism teams in Yorktown, Va., in 2003, Joel was deploying for the invasion of Iraq. About a year later, Jesse was sent to Japan, and their paths soon crossed in Okinawa, where Joel was training for his second tour.

"His captain drove him to see me on liberty in late February 2004. I was heading to Iraq. He went back to his ship," Joel said. "He would always tell me, 'I want to go.' He was always motivated to go to Iraq."

In his three tours in Iraq, which included the invasion, the battle for Fallujah and the searches for insurgents in Ramadi, Joel said he has had his share of close calls with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, the insurgents' weapon of choice.

For Jesse, though, this was his first tour in the war zone. They were both dispatched with Alpha Company from Camp Pendleton, Calif., on Feb. 27, according to Joel's wife, Sahvanna.

Joel, a corporal, was a squad leader in the 3rd Platoon. Jesse, a lance corporal, was in the 2nd Platoon. He was promoted overseas to corporal. The company is part of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

While on patrol or conducting raids and searches, Joel said that, as a squad leader, he would be the first to jump out of the truck and the first to go over the wall.

"He did the same thing as I did," Joel said of his brother's missions. "He'd drive the Humvee or he'd be a gunner."

But on the early morning of June 15, Jesse was a passenger in the back seat of a Humvee carrying Lance Cpl. Chad B. Maynard, 19, of Montrose, Colo.; Lance Cpl. Jonathan R. Flores, 18, of San Antonio; Cpl. Tyler S. Trovillion, 23, of Richardson, Texas; and Lance Cpl. Dion M. Whitley, 21, of Los Angeles.

"They were on their way back. He was in the fifth vehicle. It was an IED planted. All five were killed," Joel said.

He said the Humvee was equipped with armor, but the blast was too powerful.

"The armor works, but sometimes the unfortunate happens," he said.

Joel was on a security detail when he got the news. "Somebody came in and said the second platoon was hit. I got sick to my stomach and nobody even said it was him."

Joel said he is nearing the end of his tour and soon will be discharged. "I made a decision a while ago not to re-enlist," he said.

He said his brother was planning on getting out of the Marines, too, and both had plans to be Las Vegas police officers.

Cpl. Jesse Jaime will be buried today with full military honors at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.