The Soldiers' Stories: Brother of Marine killed in Iraq takes own life

Jason Hanson

FORKS -- Jacob Hanson's big brother, Marine Lance Cpl. Jason Hanson, 21, and three other Marines, were killed July 29 in Iraq.

A suicide bomber drove a vehicle loaded with explosives into a building near a checkpoint to their base.

Jacob and Jason's parents, Carol and Stephen Hanson, didn't want Jacob to hear about his brother's death through the small-town grapevine.

His mother went to tell him.

She pulled Jacob outside from his cooking job at the In Place in Forks and, behind the restaurant, quietly told him.

Jacob broke down crying -- then punched a trash bin so hard that he broke his hand.

Later, Jacob took to wearing his brother's dog tags.

"He didn't know what to do. He couldn't fix it," Carol said Thursday.

"I think he got lost in the sadness."

Last Sunday, Jacob took his own life.

He was 19 and had just started a job with a logging company, his mother said.

"I can't see my life beyond this day, beyond the next detail -- I have to take my life in tiny pieces right now," his mother said.

"He was a kid, and he was my friend."

Her husband, Stephen, said only that "we've been through this before" before passing the telephone to his wife.

From the Peninsula Daily News