Marine Felt Calling After 9/11 Attacks

Colin Wolfe was in sixth grade, fixated on girls, sports and the challenges of being a preteen, when a group of Marines visited his Manassas elementary school.

He returned to his Manassas home that afternoon with their presentation swimming in his head. Perhaps, he told his parents, he might enlist one day.

It was just childhood talk, his parents reasoned. Their son was a skilled ballet dancer, performing since childhood with a local dance company, and he had smarts. Perhaps he would go to college.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

Wolfe was 14 when the twin towers fell, and like so many, he watched in horror as the Pentagon burned on cable news channels.

He was just a boy, but the call to action that he felt struck deep.

In the years that followed, he collected articles depicting the attacks and search for Osama bin Laden. He talked with friends and family about the war on terror and visited the Pentagon and Ground Zero in New York.

And when he graduated from Osbourn High School in Manassas last year, he did the one thing he felt in his heart that was right: He enlisted in the Marines, ready to fight.

"Like a lot of kids, he had a sense of wanting to serve his country, but 9/11 crystallized that in him," said Mark Wolfe, his father.

Pfc. Colin J. Wolfe, 19, was deployed to Iraq in July. He was killed Aug. 30 in Anbar province, when the Humvee in which he was riding struck a roadside bomb.

Yesterday, family and friends gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the slain Marine. His parents picked Sept. 11 for the burial, believing it to be a fitting tribute to a young man who gave his life for his country in Iraq.

"He knew what he was fighting for and what he was all about," Mark Wolfe said. "He believed he was serving the country, protecting the country. He had made his choice."