Posted on: Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Kane'ohe-based Marine gave his family final gift
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Nothing could be worse than watching your child die, but Lauren Eiler is sure her son's last moments were a gift to his family.
Eiler said Downey — her oldest child — had amazing inner strength. It probably kicked into high gear when he was wounded by a sniper Nov. 10, she said.
"I truly believe his injuries would have killed him had he not decided he wanted to make it back to say goodbye to us," Eiler said yesterday from her home in Phoenix. "He knew how hard it would be for us if we couldn't say goodbye. I am so grateful."
Downey was a combat engineer. Part of his job was to blow up confiscated enemy weapons. But the explosives attached to a pile of AK-47 assault rifles did not detonate, so Downey went out to check on them, his mother said. A sniper's bullet found him, went in one side of his body and out the other. It destroyed one kidney, took out part of his bowels and severely damaged his spinal cord.
The Marines told Eiler that her son's condition was serious but expected he would survive. The prognosis was grim, though.
Photo courtesy Downey family Eiler learned about her son's injuries on Nov. 12 and flew to Bethesda the next day. Downey's father, William J. Downey, also flew to Bethesda, Eiler said. The couple divorced years earlier and have two other sons.
Downey graduated from Thunderbird High School in Phoenix in 2002 and quickly joined the Marines.
"He wanted to help other people," Eiler said of her son. "I think that is why he wanted to enter the military. He wanted to make the world a better place."
He was a smart and witty young man with "a really wonderful sense of humor," his mother said. He rarely spoke of the dangers in Iraq. At the Navy hospital, Eiler did her best to stay upbeat. Her son was often coherent, but was also troubled by occasional flashbacks. It was painful to watch. On Thursday morning, he seemed fine, smiling and talking. Then he started to bleed internally and his doctors couldn't stop that. Surgery was planned for Friday morning, but he never got to the operating room. "I guess they just couldn't stop the bleeding," Eiler said. "So they brought him up to the room and we were able to spend some time with him before he passed away." His parents were at his bedside. A grandmother, too. The commandant of the Marine Corps visited, too. He gave Downey a purple heart. They told him they were proud of him, that they loved him. "I don't know how aware he was," Downey's mother said. "I want and need to believe he heard everything we said in that room." Downey is the 14th fatality since the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment arrived in Iraq last month as part of the U.S. force buildup for the assault on Fallujah.
Reach Mike Gordon at 525-8012 or at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.
Lance Cpl. Michael A. Downey, a Marine from Arizona, had already suffered for nine days from wounds received in Fallujah when he died Friday at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Downey belonged to the combat engineer battalion from Okinawa that was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment from Marine Corps Base, Hawai'i. He was 21.
Lance Cpl. Michael A. Downey
"Unless there was a lot of healing on the miraculous level, he would have been paralyzed from the waist down," she said. "He knew when he got hit and he fell down immediately. He couldn't feel his legs. He kept asking his guys, 'Are my legs there, are my legs there?' "
Lance Cpl. Michael A. Downey, with his mother, died Friday from wounds suffered in Iraq.
