Family eagerly awaiting reunion with Marine wounded in Iraq (Terrence Burke)

Dorothy Faherty holds a portrait of her son, Terrence ’Shane’ Burke, who lost the lower part of a leg in a bomb blast in Iraq last week.

Tom Burke has been rehearsing exactly what he will say to his little brother, the Boston cop who lost his lower leg in a bomb blast in Iraq on Monday, ever since he heard the news of his injury.

“I’ll probably say ‘What’s up Big Dog?’ That’s what I called him. He wouldn’t want me to get all mushy on him,” Tom Burke, 33, said yesterday as he prepared to leave his Dorchester home for a veteran’s hospital in Texas where his brother, Terrence “Shane” Burke, a rookie Boston cop assigned to South Boston District C-6, will be flown today.

There, the wounded Marine will be treated for second-degree burns that cover his body, before he begins to learn how to function without his lower right leg at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., next week. The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association is paying to fly his family to Bethesda next week. “Obviously, this is a real hit for our family,” Tom Burke said. “But we know it could have been worse. We are grateful he is alive.”

No one is more grateful than Tom and Terrence Burke’s mother, Dorothy Faherty, who, along with Burke’s step-mother Joyce Burke, broke down upon hearing of his injuries.

Read the rest at the Boston Herald