Jeremiah Edward Savage – Lance Corporal, United States Marine Corps

by

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

No. 452-04
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 13, 2004

DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lance Corporal Jeremiah E. Savage, 21, of Livingston, Tennessee, died May 12, 2004, of wounds received due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.  He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, at Camp Pendleton, California.

For further information related to this release, contact Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton Public Affairs Office at (760) 725-5044.

20 May 2004:
Bloomfield, Iowa

The widow of a Tennessee soldier killed in Iraq says that she plans to stay in Bloomfield to raise her four children, including the infant son her husband never saw.

Kassandra Savage’s husband, 21-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Jeremiah Savage, of Livingston, Tennessee, died last week (12 May 2004) of wounds from hostile fire in Iraq.

The couple’s son, Eldon Wyatt Savage, was born six weeks ago in Bloomfield, the town where Kassandra Savage and her three daughters had moved to be closer to family.

She told the Bloomfield Democrat that she spoke to her husband the day before he died.

The couple met through mutual friends while still in high school. They were married after he entered the Marine Corps in 2001.

Kassandra Savage said when her husband got orders for Iraq, she decided to move closer to family. Her father and sister live in Bloomfield.

Funeral services for Jeremiah Savage are set for next week at Arlington National Cemetery.

Livingston mourns a boy who lived to be a Marine
By MICHELLE E. SHAW

Jeremiah Edward Savage saw a lot of things as a Marine.

But as a father, he never got to see his newborn son — not even a picture of the baby, born two months ago.

”I talked to him (on Tuesday), and I told him that his pictures were on the way,” said his wife, Cassandra Savage. ”I told him the pictures were in there with his cigarettes and he should be getting them any day now. I’m pretty sure he never got them.”

Lance Corporal Savage, 21, of Livingston, Tennessee, died Wednesday of wounds from hostile fire in Al Anbar province, Iraq, according to the Pentagon. He was based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

His son, Eldon Wyatt Savage, was born in April, only weeks after his father left for the Middle East.

Livingston, the county seat of Overton County, has a population of 3,500, covers 5 square miles and rests on the Cumberland Plateau.

It’s where Savage grew up and where many of his family and friends reside, including his parents, Ronald and Eva Savage. It is also the hometown of the first American to have been slain in the Vietnam War, Army Specialist 4th Class James T. Davis, who was killed in an ambush in 1961.

Yesterday some of the people who knew Jeremiah Savage spoke lovingly and cheerfully about a young man who lived his dream.

”When he was in the fifth grade, he told me he was going to be a Marine,” Eva Savage said. ”And that’s exactly what he did.”

Ruth Savage said she didn’t expect to lose one of her 10 grandchildren so soon but rejoices in her grandson’s memory.

”All he ever talked about as a boy was becoming a Marine,” she said. ”In the meantime, he was a very helpful boy, always lending a hand to his grandma and grandpa.”

Gary W. Ledbetter, principal of Livingston Academy, said Savage had ”a sparkle in his eye for service.”

Jeremiah Savage graduated from the public high school in 2001, the same school where his brother Jonathan, 19, graduated last year and his sister Chelsea, 15, is finishing her freshman year. He ran track and was manager of the boy’s basketball team, Ledbetter said. The principal said he remembered Savage as ”an involved student” and ”one who liked to have conversations.”

”When he wanted to talk to me, it was usually about the military,” he said. ”He also liked to talk to the (military) recruiters who came to the school.”

”We had college days and he was very cordial and attended those things, but his eyes sparkled when the recruiters came in,” he said. ”You could tell that that was Jeremiah’s calling as far as he was concerned.”

In addition to serving slightly more than two months in Iraq, Jeremiah Savage had a yearlong assignment in Okinawa, Japan.

Eva Savage said her son was good about staying in touch with her. She said two days before he died, the two spent a long time chatting via the Internet.

”We clowned around for a long time on the computer Monday,” she said. ”I have a Web cam and I had it hooked up and we just talked about everything. I made sure he knew we loved him.”

Ledbetter said the young Marine often kept in touch with him, too, and phoned the school the Wednesday before he died.

”I wasn’t in my office,” Ledbetter said. ”The secretary talked to him for a while, and she told him I was in the building but not in the office. And I don’t like to use the all-call system when class is going on, but just that once, I wish she had called me to the office.”

Cassandra Savage said her last conversation with her husband was a good one.

”We talked about what we would do when he came home,” she said. ”Where we would go, where we would live and that kind of thing.”

She said he asked what she was doing and asked about the kids — Jayden, 6, and Keyara, 5, who are Cassandra’s, and Madison, 19 months, and 6-week-old Eldon, who belonged to the couple.

”He was doing the good-daddy thing,” she said. ”He was concerned about how I was healing because I had to have a C-section, and I told him I was fine and the baby was fine.

”Eldon was kind of small when he was first born, but he’s chunked up nicely now,” she said with a laugh.

Savage’s mother said her son had a ”sense of honor” for his family, community and country. She said it was in that sprit that she was dealing with her eldest son’s death.

”Faith in God, that is my main rock, but I have to be strong for Jeremiah,” she said. ”His life and death were not in vain and I would not do him honor by being weak and falling apart. I have to honor him.”

Savage’s body will be returned to Tennessee in the next week to 10 days, Eva Savage said. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

jesavage-farewell-photo

A picture released by the US Marines shows Lance Corporal David R. Dahl
saying goodbye to his best friend Lance Corporal Jeremiah E. Savage during a
memorial service at camp Hurricane Point, in Iraq. Continuing violence saw another
US Marine killed in action in the restive province of al-Anbar in western Iraq

SAVAGE, JEREMIAH E

  • LCPL US MARINE CORPS
  • VETERAN SERVICE DATES: 05/30/2000 – 05/12/2004
  • DATE OF BIRTH: 10/10/1982
  • DATE OF DEATH: 05/12/2004
  • DATE OF INTERMENT: 05/27/2004
    BURIED AT: SECTION 60  SITE 7985  – Arlington National Cemetery

jesavage-gravesite-photo-082005

jesavage-1204

Read our general and most popular articles

Leave a Comment