Marine Pfc. Fernando B. Hannon

Died August 15, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

19, of Wildomar, Calif.; assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; died Aug. 15 of injuries sustained in enemy action in Anbar province, Iraq.

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California Marine killed in Iraq

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A Camp Pendleton Marine whose father’s service in the Vietnam War inspired him to join the military has been killed in Iraq.

Pfc. Fernando B. Hannon, 19, died Aug. 15 in an explosion in the country’s volatile Anbar province. Hannon, a rifleman deployed about two months in Iraq, had been assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force.

Hannon had a younger brother and three older sisters and was described by his family as warm and affectionate.

“He just glowed,” his sister Sonya Hannon told the Los Angeles Times.

His fiance, Ruth Ponce, 21, remembered him as unassuming and earnest. She was so taken with him at John Marshall High School in Los Angeles that she asked him to the prom during their senior year.

“He would laugh with his whole spirit,” Ponce said. “I’m just glad we found each other.”

Hannon enlisted in the Marines while living in Riverside County’s Wildomar section before his family moved to Mojave.

His sister Sonya Hannon said that while he may have not decided yet on a career, he joined the military because he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, Spurgeon Hannon, a Vietnam veteran.

“He joined because of you, Dad,” Sonya Hannon told her father.