awakening2lite
05-05-2008, 01:23 PM
Bobby Macrum
http://iraq.pigstye.net/images/articles/MacrumRobert_1.jpg
Rank: Seaman
Age: 22
Missing: Sept. 12, 2005
Ship: USS Princeton
Location: Persian Gulf, 35 miles off Iran
Last update: May 3, 2008
As the USS Princeton, a $1 billion guided-missile cruiser with a crew of 370, sliced through smooth seas in the Persian Gulf, Seaman Bobby Macrum quietly disappeared.
No one saw whether the 22-year-old sailor from Sugar Land, Texas, fell, jumped or was pushed from the ship about 35 miles off Iran.
The vanishing, sometime after nightfall on Sept. 12, 2005, is a whodunit that still puzzles investigators. And those who were close to Macrum, who was inspired to enlist after 9/11, remain emotionally drained and desperate for closure.
"When I went to the door, I saw two Navy men dressed in white uniforms and I knew what they were there for," his mother, Mary Macrum Jones, remembers of the day life changed forever.
"But instead of telling me Bobby had died, they told me they didn't know where he was, and to this day, they still don't."
She imagines one day her doorbell will ring again and it will be her son saying he made it to shore and has been living in an exotic land.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service said that its probe should be concluded this year but that answers are not likely.
"There are frustratingly few reliable facts about [Macrum's] activities on 12-13 September," notes a preliminary report Macrum's commanders sent the Department of the Navy. "After extensive investigation and crew member interviews, it is impossible to determine what caused him to enter the water."
No evidence of foul play or suicide was found, nor any clue as to what made him go over the side.
After an exhaustive five-day search involving ships, jets, helicopters and even help from the Iranian navy, combing an area that grew to 4,000 square miles, Macrum was declared dead, lost at sea in the line of duty.
"Nothing makes sense," Capt. William Ault, then the Princeton's commanding officer, said from the ship's home port of San Diego recently. "I am the person responsible for his safety, and I'd certainly like to know what went wrong."
The Princeton was in its fifth month at sea and due to head home in about two weeks.
It was conducting security operations in the Persian Gulf. Macrum's death was as mysterious as it was unusual.
Of the more than 4,000 military personnel who have died as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the past five years, only two sailors are presumed lost at sea.
Sailors have nightmares about this sort of predicament -- treading water for hours before anyone notices they're missing at sea.
"It is definitely on your mind a lot, particularly if you go out on the deck at night," said Tom Cutler, who authored recent editions of a seagoing bible for the Navy. "If you go out alone and you go over the side, nobody is going to know you're out there."
Although she had no body to bury, his mother had a marker carved and placed it in a shrine-like enclosure with an American flag, white rocks and a bench behind her home in Gilmer, in northeast Texas.
"Our Smiling Hero," reads the inscription, along with an image of a Texas flag and a Navy seal.
Macrum joined the Navy to help defend the United States as well as make up for any wrongs he may have done earlier in life.
Friends recalled a beaming Macrum surprised a party by announcing he enlisted.
The muscular deckhand was said to be confident and well read.
He could be a braggart about nice cars and women but was also mischievous and known to be the life of the party.
Macrum loved Jimmy Buffet music and could do a dead-on imitation of Boomhauer, the babbling character on the Fox cartoon show "King of the Hill."
He also was a strong swimmer and was on an armed team that searched commercial vessels.
At the time of his death, Macrum was at a crossroads.
He was due to get out of the Navy in a few months to attend college.
In May 2003, he asked a friend if she would marry him in order to make an extra $900 in monthly Navy pay for civilian housing so that he could move off the ship, according to a copy of an e-mail he sent from his official account on the Princeton. In exchange, he proposed giving her $250 a month, according to the e-mail.
Instead, in September 2004, he married a 23-year-old from San Diego named Grace Nordenson.
His family said he planned to divorce her.
Nordenson, whom Macrum's family never has met, received an unclear portion of cash survivor's benefits.
Macrum's family said that it got $200,000 in life insurance and that she got the other half. She did not attend his memorial service.
Citing privacy laws, the Navy would not confirm that payment.
Naval investigators are trying to find Nordenson for follow-up questioning but wouldn't elaborate. The Houston Chronicle's efforts to reach her by mail, phone and her MySpace page were unsuccessful.
"We've had a heck of a time trying to locate her, but I think we're getting closer," said Charles Warmuth, assistant special agent in charge of the NCIS office in San Diego.
"There is nothing to date to indicate any foul play at all, but the case remains open," he said. "We don't give opinions or hypotheses."
source: http://www.startribune.com/nation/18537884.html?page=1&c=y
http://iraq.pigstye.net/images/articles/MacrumRobert_1.jpg
Rank: Seaman
Age: 22
Missing: Sept. 12, 2005
Ship: USS Princeton
Location: Persian Gulf, 35 miles off Iran
Last update: May 3, 2008
As the USS Princeton, a $1 billion guided-missile cruiser with a crew of 370, sliced through smooth seas in the Persian Gulf, Seaman Bobby Macrum quietly disappeared.
No one saw whether the 22-year-old sailor from Sugar Land, Texas, fell, jumped or was pushed from the ship about 35 miles off Iran.
The vanishing, sometime after nightfall on Sept. 12, 2005, is a whodunit that still puzzles investigators. And those who were close to Macrum, who was inspired to enlist after 9/11, remain emotionally drained and desperate for closure.
"When I went to the door, I saw two Navy men dressed in white uniforms and I knew what they were there for," his mother, Mary Macrum Jones, remembers of the day life changed forever.
"But instead of telling me Bobby had died, they told me they didn't know where he was, and to this day, they still don't."
She imagines one day her doorbell will ring again and it will be her son saying he made it to shore and has been living in an exotic land.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service said that its probe should be concluded this year but that answers are not likely.
"There are frustratingly few reliable facts about [Macrum's] activities on 12-13 September," notes a preliminary report Macrum's commanders sent the Department of the Navy. "After extensive investigation and crew member interviews, it is impossible to determine what caused him to enter the water."
No evidence of foul play or suicide was found, nor any clue as to what made him go over the side.
After an exhaustive five-day search involving ships, jets, helicopters and even help from the Iranian navy, combing an area that grew to 4,000 square miles, Macrum was declared dead, lost at sea in the line of duty.
"Nothing makes sense," Capt. William Ault, then the Princeton's commanding officer, said from the ship's home port of San Diego recently. "I am the person responsible for his safety, and I'd certainly like to know what went wrong."
The Princeton was in its fifth month at sea and due to head home in about two weeks.
It was conducting security operations in the Persian Gulf. Macrum's death was as mysterious as it was unusual.
Of the more than 4,000 military personnel who have died as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the past five years, only two sailors are presumed lost at sea.
Sailors have nightmares about this sort of predicament -- treading water for hours before anyone notices they're missing at sea.
"It is definitely on your mind a lot, particularly if you go out on the deck at night," said Tom Cutler, who authored recent editions of a seagoing bible for the Navy. "If you go out alone and you go over the side, nobody is going to know you're out there."
Although she had no body to bury, his mother had a marker carved and placed it in a shrine-like enclosure with an American flag, white rocks and a bench behind her home in Gilmer, in northeast Texas.
"Our Smiling Hero," reads the inscription, along with an image of a Texas flag and a Navy seal.
Macrum joined the Navy to help defend the United States as well as make up for any wrongs he may have done earlier in life.
Friends recalled a beaming Macrum surprised a party by announcing he enlisted.
The muscular deckhand was said to be confident and well read.
He could be a braggart about nice cars and women but was also mischievous and known to be the life of the party.
Macrum loved Jimmy Buffet music and could do a dead-on imitation of Boomhauer, the babbling character on the Fox cartoon show "King of the Hill."
He also was a strong swimmer and was on an armed team that searched commercial vessels.
At the time of his death, Macrum was at a crossroads.
He was due to get out of the Navy in a few months to attend college.
In May 2003, he asked a friend if she would marry him in order to make an extra $900 in monthly Navy pay for civilian housing so that he could move off the ship, according to a copy of an e-mail he sent from his official account on the Princeton. In exchange, he proposed giving her $250 a month, according to the e-mail.
Instead, in September 2004, he married a 23-year-old from San Diego named Grace Nordenson.
His family said he planned to divorce her.
Nordenson, whom Macrum's family never has met, received an unclear portion of cash survivor's benefits.
Macrum's family said that it got $200,000 in life insurance and that she got the other half. She did not attend his memorial service.
Citing privacy laws, the Navy would not confirm that payment.
Naval investigators are trying to find Nordenson for follow-up questioning but wouldn't elaborate. The Houston Chronicle's efforts to reach her by mail, phone and her MySpace page were unsuccessful.
"We've had a heck of a time trying to locate her, but I think we're getting closer," said Charles Warmuth, assistant special agent in charge of the NCIS office in San Diego.
"There is nothing to date to indicate any foul play at all, but the case remains open," he said. "We don't give opinions or hypotheses."
source: http://www.startribune.com/nation/18537884.html?page=1&c=y