Marine Capt. Alan Rowe

Died September 3, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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35, of Hagerman, Idaho; assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif.; killed Sept. 3 by enemy action in Anbar province, Iraq.

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Idaho Marine killed in Iraq

Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho — A Marine from Idaho was killed while securing a bridge in northern Iraq.

Capt. Alan Rowe, 35, died instantly Friday in Iraq’s Anbar province. It was the fourth time Rowe had gone overseas with the military. He was the seventh Idaho serviceman to die in the Iraq war.

“He did it. He didn’t question it. He was doing it for our country,” said Diana Pauls, Rowe’s sister. “He knows he was helping the Iraqi people. That was what he wanted to do all his life.”

Lance Cpl. Nicholas Wilt, 23, of Tampa, Fla., and 1st Lt. Ronald Winchester, 25, of Rockville Center, N.Y., also were killed.

Rowe, a former Hagerman resident, is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter in Yucca Valley, Calif., said Capt. Chad Walton, a public affairs officer for the Marine base at Twentynine Palms.

Rowe enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1985 and graduated from officer candidate school nine years later. He was sent to Iraq in August, Walton said.

The soldiers were all members of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based out of Twentynine Palms, Walton said.

“Our family is extremely proud of Alan,” his family said. “He believed in his corps and in his country. We love him deeply and will miss him terribly.”

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Officer killed in Iraq remembered as perfect Marine

GOODING, Idaho — Capt. Alan Rowe is being called a perfect Marine, respected and dedicated to the Corps and still able to be a husband and father.

The veteran of four overseas deployments, Rowe was killed along with two other Marines last Friday in an explosion in Iraq’s Anbar province, near the Syrian border. He was a member of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Rowe, 35, was the seventh Idaho serviceman to die in the Iraq war.

“He was a quiet, humble person and extremely polite,” his widow, Dawn, recalled from their early days of dating. “He was a traditional type of gentleman. My mom was surprised to meet such a ... perfect-picture Marine.”

A graduate of Gooding High School, the college of Southern Idaho and Boise State University, where he earned a degree in political science, Rowe served as an intern in the early 1990s to retiring state Sen. Laird Noh.

“He was a class act and a great citizen,” Noh said.

Rowe’s funeral was scheduled for Saturday at Mountain View Cemetery in Fairfield, near Soldier Mountain where the coupled skied. Dawn Rowe said she considered burial in the new veterans cemetery in Boise but decided the Soldier Mountain area was “so much more what he was about.”

The couple had two children, Blake, 5, and Caitlin, 3.

“He did a great job balancing a pretty intense Marine Corps career with also being a great husband and father,” Dawn Rowe said. “He worked extremely hard to balance it.”

A memorial service was scheduled for Friday on the Marine Corps Base at Twentynine Palms.

Heidi Kinner and her husband, Scott Kinner, befriended the Rowes 10 years ago when the men served together in the Marines.

“He was so dedicated to the Marine Corps,” she said. “He was really driven and believed in what he did. He was a Marine’s Marine. Tall, blond and fit. Kind of the mental image you think of when you think of the Marine Corps.”

— Associated Press

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Marine receives posthumous promotion

GOODING, Idaho — Capt. Alan Blake Rowe has been posthumously promoted to major after being killed in Iraq last week.

Dawn Rowe, the widow of the 35-year-old Marine, said the promotion had been pending and would have been awarded within the next few months had Rowe lived.

Rowe was the weapons company commander for the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Twentynine Palms, Calif. He died last Friday when a remote-controlled explosive device detonated as he returned to his vehicle after inspecting a bridge in Anbar province, near the Syrian border.

— Associated Press