Posted on:
Friday, October 13, 2000
12:54 PM
Profiles of some of the sailors killed
By Associated Press
Sketches of some of the 17 sailors killed or missing after the bomb attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, including Ronchester Santiago of Kingsville
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| Santiago |
Petty Officer 3rd Class Ronchester Santiago, 22, of Kingsville, Texas, had been in the Navy since graduating in 1996 from H.M. King High School. He was scheduled to get out of service in December and planned to study electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. ``He was attracted to the adventure in the Navy,'' said his father, Rogelio Santiago, a retired Navy Petty Officer 1st Class. ``He wanted to see the world. He just wanted the experience.''
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Information Systems Technician Tim Gauna, 21, of Rice, Texas, was a 1997 graduate of Ennis High School, where teachers said he was a quiet student who excelled in baseball and art. In 1999, he joined the Navy as a radio man. ``He went there to better himself, to make a better life for himself,'' said his mother, Sarah Gauna. The family last heard from Gauna by phone a few days ago from the Cole as it headed for a secret destination. ``He just kept saying, 'We're in dangerous waters, Mom, but we're OK. I'll be OK. I promise you,''' Sarah Gauna said.
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Ensign Andrew Triplett, from the small Mississippi town of Shuqualak, had been in the Navy for 13 years. ``He was a good person. He was one of the best that I know of,'' said his mother, Savannah Triplett, a cook at C&K Super Stop in Shuqualak. She said her son was a strong student who excelled on Navy tests. Triplett, who will be buried in Norfolk, Va. is survived by his wife, Laurie, of Detroit, whom he met while in the Navy, and two children.
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Duties aboard the Cole for Seaman Craig Wibberley, 19, of Williamsport, Md., included raising and lowering the destroyer's small anchor. ``He was a good All-American boy,'' said the Rev. Anne Weatherbolt, the Wibberley family minister. ``Any time there's a loss on a small community everybody feels it.'' His mother, Patty Wibberley, is a nursing assistant at an assisted-living center. ``I'm just numb. It hasn't sunk in yet,'' she said. One of Wibberley's friends, Tyler Growden, 19, said the two liked to fish in the Potomac River. He and others described Craig — who graduated from Washington Technical High School last year — as someone who had no enemies.
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Kevin Shawn Rux, of Portland, N.D., was an electronics warfare technician on the Cole, and son of a Navy veteran. ``His dad was Navy lifetime, and he was so much like his dad,'' said Rux's aunt, Joy Ust, of Finley, N.D.
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Engineman 2nd Class Marc Nieto, 24, of Fond du Lac, Wis., joined the Navy six years ago and had only two weeks of duty left. His mother, Sharon Priepke, said Nieto worked in the engine room on the Cole and loved repairing machinery.
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Electronics Technician 1st Class Richard Costelow was from Morrisville, Pa., a blue-collar suburb across the Delaware River from Trenton, N.J. His wife and three children had been staying at the Paxtuxent River Naval Air Station in Lexington Park, Md.
