Posted on: Friday, November 12, 2004
Hawai'i-based Marine laid to rest in Nevada
Associated Press
BOULDER CITY, Nev. — Peter Lukac dropped a handful of shell casings from a 21-gun salute onto his brother's oak casket after it was lowered into a grave at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery.
John Locher • Associated Press "When he was around me, he was the cool big brother," 15-year-old Peter Lukac said as family and friends said farewell Wednesday to 19-year-old Marine Pfc. John Lukac of Las Vegas.
The Hawai'i-based Marine was killed Oct. 30 in a car bomb attack near Fallujah, Iraq. He was the sixth soldier with ties to Nevada killed in Iraq or Kuwait since Operation Iraqi Freedom began in 2003.
With his father, Jan, and mother, Helena, weeping in the arms of white-gloved Marines, Peter stood as his only brother was buried on the 229th birthday of the Marine Corps.
"We had a dream to come to the free states," Jan Lukac, 52, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "He said, 'I'm so glad to be born here.' He was willing to die for this country."
John Lukac was born April 20, 1985, in Los Angeles, two years after his parents immigrated to the United States. They had escaped to Austria from Czechoslovakia, where they had lived under communist rule during the Cold War.
The family moved to Las Vegas in 2001 so Helena could work at the MGM Grand hotel-casino. Jan commuted to his roofing and home refurbishing business in West Hollywood, Calif.
John Lukac joined the Marines after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
He kept one for himself.
Helena Lukac bids farewell to her 19-year-old son John, a Hawai'i based Marine killed in Iraq. He died in an attack near Fallujah.
