Bruins Salute Fan's Repeat Tour

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Boston Globe
October 27, 2008
Diehard follower given lifetime thrill before return to war zone
By David Filipov, Globe Staff
He thrust his arms in the air. His beaming face and number 8 "Martin" jersey flashed on the Jumbotron, drawing a roar of applause. His friends and comrades slapped him on the back and hugged him. The TD Banknorth Garden was rocking, and Derek Martin was the reason.
It was a dream come true for a diehard Boston Bruins fan.
"This," Martin declared as the cheers subsided, "is one of the greatest moments of my life."
Martin, 36, of Rochester, hadn't scored the winning goal or made the game-saving defensive stop. He is a staff sergeant in the 772d Military Police Company, based in Taunton. Yesterday at 6:45 a.m., he and his friends reported for duty and prepared to deploy to Iraq. But Saturday, they spent their last free night cheering the Bruins' 5-4 win over the Atlantic Thrashers.
There was no place they would rather have been than at the Garden.
They have all served in Iraq or Afghanistan. None of them had to go back overseas. They signed up to serve together; to look after one another. The 772d, they say, is like that.
"They're like my family," Martin said. "Everyone that's going wants to go."
The Bruins found out about Martin when he attended a party for season ticket holders. He had purchased balcony seats for a dozen games: Even though he was bound for Iraq, he wanted to keep his seniority as a season ticket holder.
When you're a diehard Bruins fan, you do things like that. And Martin was born to be a diehard. His mother named him after Derek Sanderson, the center on the Bruins teams that won the Stanley Cup in 1970 and 1972. Never the biggest kid in the neighborhood, Martin grew up idolizing Stan Jonathan, the team's fiery-if-undersized sparkplug in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When his mother died of cancer, Martin's favorite player became Bruins forward Phil Kessel, a cancer survivor. And Martin's favorite sports memory is the Bruins' thrilling Game 6 victory over the Canadiens in April (in a playoff series Boston lost in seven games).
For Saturday night's game, he purchased 20 tickets so he could bring his friends. The Bruins decided to make it a night they wouldn't forget.
"We wanted to really give him a good sendoff," said Charlie Jacobs, the team's executive vice president.
First came a pregame chat with Jacobs, Cam Neely, the Bruins legend and current vice president, and general manager Peter Chiarelli. Then Martin, Sergeant Chris Willis, and Staff Sergeant Brian Parker bumped fists with the players as they headed out of the locker room.
The team upgraded their seats from the balcony to a loge section near the ice. During a break in the second period, the team sent two "ice girls" to present Martin with the jersey, as the Jumbotron flashed pictures from his 2003 deployment in Afghanistan and "Over There" blared from the public address speakers. People in the crowd yelled out "Thank you!"
Willis, 28, cheered Martin the loudest. He and Martin had served together in the 772d in Afghanistan.
"He was one of the most annoying people I'd met in my life," Martin recalled with a grin. "One day I had to yell at him."
They were best friends after that. Willis completed a tour in Iraq last year, a difficult mission in a counterintelligence unit. But he didn't hesitate when he heard Martin had quit his job as a National Guard recruiter to rejoin the 772d. They had an "Iraq pact" - if one were going, so would the other. Willis skipped on a chance at a promotion so that he, too, could rejoin the company.
"I made a promise," Willis said.
He said he didn't mind going on his third deployment in five years.
"Better us now than our kids later," he said.
Sergeant Erina Ferreira, 27, served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. She befriended Willis and Martin in Fort Drum, N.Y., as she was heading out to Iraq and they were returning from Afghanistan. Martin refers to Ferreira's mother, Laura, as "my mom when I'm overseas." Recently, Ferreira had been serving in a Connecticut National Guard unit, but she transferred to the 772d to go to back to Iraq with her friends.
"I know what to look for, I understand a bit about the culture," said Ferreira, who has worked with Iraqi police and picked up a little Arabic. "I want to look after them. They're my family."
Late in the third period of Saturday's game, Milan Lucic's third goal of the night put the Bruins ahead to stay. Again, Martin thrust his arms in the air. "Amazing freaking game," he said.
On Wednesday, the company heads to Fort Dix, N.J., for pre-deployment training. Then, it's off to Iraq. Martin will take along his memories of Saturday night.
But what will he do in the desert, without ice hockey?
"I think," he said, "I'm going to start a wiffle ball league."
 
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