2nd Lieut James Patrick Blecksmith
Born: September 26, 1980 in Pasadena, California
Died: November 11, 2004 in Fallujah, Iraq
2nd Lt. James P. Blecksmith of San Marino, California was the youngest of three children and grew to be 6-foot-3 and about 220 pounds. The 1999 Flintridge Preparatory School graduate played football as quarterback, and ran track, making it to the CIF finals in about 10 events during high school. He was athletic and intelligent, with good SAT scores, and he was recruited by the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland where he continued his football career, playing wide receiver for the Navy Midshipmen. Known best as JP, he graduated from the Naval Academy with a B.S. degree in economics. He was commissioned as an officer in May of 2003 and started his training at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He was deployed to Iraq on Sept. 10 2004. Serving in the military was in his blood. His father was in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and as a boy, James would dig out his father’s old jungle utilities, dress himself for battle and dig a hole in a vacant lot next door to the home. J.P. is survived by his parents, Pam and Ed, a sister, Christina, a brother, Alex, his grandmother, Peggy McCormick. James was killed at age 24 by enemy action in Anbar province, Iraq.
Marines
3rd Battalion
5th Marine Regiment
1st Marine Division
I Marine Expeditionary Force
Camp Pendleton, California
San Gabriel Cemetery in San Gabriel, California
The 2nd Lieut James Patrick Blecksmith by Freedom Remembered, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
