Brooklyn Soldier Killed In Iraq Returns Home to Final Rest (John J. McKenna)

On an overcast late summer morning, the flag-draped coffin carried Marine Captain John J. McKenna IV home one last time to the tight-knit streets of Windsor Terrace.

McKenna, 30, died a hero’s death last week, slain while coming to the aid of a fellow fallen Marine in the streets of Iraq.

As United States Marines, New York City police officers and New York State troopers lined Fort Hamilton Parkway between 4th and 5th Streets three rows deep, McKenna’s coffin was solemnly carried into the large cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, 2805 Fort Hamilton Parkway.

“He grew up in this parish and I was a childhood friend of John,” recalled Father Joseph Fonti. “We were the boys of East 2nd Street and let me tell you, East 2nd Street is one of the greatest blocks in this borough. Growing up it was filled with kids playing and sounds of laughter.”

“As the boys of East 2nd Street, we would play soldiers and John was the boy soldier I knew who turned into a man soldier who gave his life in Iraq,” he said.

Father Fonti called McKenna a credit to Irish ancestry, who was born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial.

He was a small redhead with sparkling Irish eyes that older kids would pick on, but he always took the knocks and kept coming back, said Father Fonti.

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