Family and friends of a security worker support the U.S. operation even as they mourn his death

Baltimore Sun ^ | April 3, 2004 | Jean Marbella

[Cincinatus' Wife]

WILLOUGHBY, Ohio - To this tidy suburb came news reports from halfway around the world that revealed that one of the four contractors brutally murdered and mutilated by anti-American militants in Fallujah, Iraq, was Danica and Jozo's son, Joe's neighbor, and John and Frank's former student.

And yet, for all the personal horror over one of their own dying so unspeakably, Jerry Zovko's family and friends want what he started finished.

"He would just hug me and say, 'Mom, I am needed. I have to go there. I can make a difference,'" Danica Zovko said yesterday, recalling her efforts to persuade her son not to go to Iraq as part of a private security detail. "We need to stay united. We need to support our troops. We started something that needs to be done."

Her 32-year-old son was an Army Ranger turned private security operative, one of four employees of the North Carolina-based Blackwater Security Consulting whose deaths highlighted the increasing role and danger that such personnel face side by side with soldiers in the world's hot spots.

With her family gathered around her, Zovko spoke yesterday of the dual role she finds herself in - the mother grieving her lost son and the patriot who staunchly supports the increasingly dangerous mission even though it robbed her of her eldest son.

She and her husband, Jozo - they also use the Americanized versions of their names, Donna and Joe - are immigrants from Croatia who own an auto body shop in nearby Cleveland.

Even as her family shields her from news reports of the attack, Danica Zovko can't help but want to know more about it, particularly who those attackers were and who raised them to feel such hate.

"I would want to know. I would want to see, just as a mother who has given birth to a son, why would she [an attacker's mother] be any different from me, or any other mother?" Zovko said. "Does she have no heart?"

In these aging suburbs northeast of Cleveland, where a wet and wintry wind whips off Lake Erie even as spring bulbs begin to push through the ground, a sense of loss pervades the air. Croatians and other Eastern Europeans make up a significant part of the population in these parts, and the pictures in the paper of Jerry Zovko seem so very familiar.

[jazzlite]

Zovko..Unfortunately, if she has a heart, she does not show it out of fear for herself, because the actions of her son and her culture are extremely primitive, without civilization. They act without discipline and they act because they have been taught that all other people who are not of their beliefs are pagan and no better than dogs. They are also just as brutal to their own if anyone dares to break their rules. How does civilization deal with people like this who are so primitive in their belief an action, but yet have among them a few with the means to carry off a 9/11?

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[hmmmmm]

What a family! We all suffer with any American/Coalition life lost over there but they (and many many more families)have paid the ultimate price. Somehow they still manage see the overall picture. They're all heroes...all who've died in service to their Country and the families they've left behind. If only the traitorist/criminalist/subhuman leftists could focus on something other than their own self-serving, take America down at any cost, agendas they might learn something worthwhile.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

"He would just hug me and say, 'Mom, I am needed. I have to go there. I can make a difference,'" Danica Zovko said yesterday, recalling her efforts to persuade her son not to go to Iraq as part of a private security detail. "We need to stay united. We need to support our troops. We started something that needs to be done."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few more tributes to these brave men.

[blackie]

Prayers for our brave Freedom Fighters and their families ~ Bump!

We are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ trolls, terrorists, democrats and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!

~~ Bush/Cheney 2004 ~~

[StarCMC]

God bless these heroes -- and thank God for patriots like these...

[archy]

[SAMWolf]

Bump

[PhilDragoo]

God Bless these noble warriors for their cause, our cause, is just.