Sgt. Mark P. Adams

After their final embrace, Mark P. Adams' father noticed two tears trickling down his son's face. "Then he looked at me," Phillip Adams said. "It wasn't a sad look. But he knew, and I knew, we would never see each other on this Earth again." Adams, 24, of Morrisville, N.C., was killed Oct. 15 from a roadside bomb in Saqlawiyah. He was assigned to Camp Lejeune. Friends and fellow Marines said he loved NASCAR and Van Halen and liked to play softball. Adams joined the Marines in 1999 after graduating from high school, where he helped the wrestling team win the state championship. "I was the battalion tattoo artist, and he was always hanging out in my room," said Anthony DeFelice. "He would never get one, though. He was too afraid of what his mom would say." After two semesters at Wake Tech, Adams told his dad he wanted to re-enlist, and this time he wanted to go to Iraq. His father, however, did not want him to go. "I said 'Mark, you could get killed,'" Phillip Adams said in his eulogy. "He said 'Daddy, I'm not afraid to die for my country.'" He also is survived by his mother, Rene.