Luke Holler remembered by parents

BULVERDE — John and Ruth Holler had been counting the days until they saw their son return from Iraq.

“We truly thought he would come home in March,” said Ruth, the mother of Lance Cpl. Luke B. Holler, 21, a Marine reservist from Bulverde.

Last week, Luke left Iraq for what John and Ruth hope is a better place than even they could provide.

Luke was killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in western Iraq’s Al-Anbar province while soldiers were extracting his unit from a reconnaissance mission. Luke was the ninth Marine from San Antonio’s 4th Reconnaissance Battalion to die in Iraq since the March 20, 2003, invasion of the country.

The Bulverde couple received the chilling news that their son wasn’t coming home early Friday when two Marines showed up on their doorstep. Since then, they’ve been trying to make sense of the death of their son, but say they have been surrounded by family, friends and support from the Marine Corps to help them through their grief.

The grieving but proud Marine mom said Luke told her that he wanted to join the Marines because he wanted to join the hardest branch of the military.

“I need to do this — I want to serve my country,” she said he told his parents. “If I’m going to do it, I want the toughest.”

Ruth said her son needed structure and that he was “very social in school,” a sentiment echoed by Craig Walker, administrator of Bracken Christian School, where Luke graduated from in 2003.

“I remember Luke as a happy student. A lot of the students liked Luke,” Walker said.

Luke’s sister, Rebekah, said she remembered Luke as the “class clown.”

After high school, Luke attended San Antonio College and then worked at different jobs in San Antonio for a year before going to boot camp.

Luke graduated from boot camp on Nov. 5, 2004, a date that holds special meaning to Luke’s family and fiancee, Jessica Coker.

“That was the date Jessica, Luke’s longtime love, and he decided would be their dating anniversary date,” Ruth said.

According to Ruth, the year Luke went into the Marines he did nothing but train for his chosen specialty — reconnaissance — going from one school to the next all over the country.

Ruth said Luke went away to boot camp “with insecurities about himself, but when he came back, he was a man, secure in himself. He loved the Marines.”

But he also loved his fiancee and had decided not to make the military a career. They had planned to get married once he got out of the Marines and, according to Rebekah, Luke had been saving up for the ring.

Funeral services for Lance Cpl. Luke Holler are pending at Eagle’s Nest Church in San Antonio.

Bracken Christian School will hold a tribute to veterans on Friday before Veterans Day, and Luke will be honored at the event. The ceremony will take place at 8:30 a.m. Friday in the school gym, located at 670 Old Boerne Road, just west of U.S. 281. The public is invited to attend.

From the Herald

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