Christopher Anderson remembered

Navy corpsman Christopher Anderson wanted to be in the center of the action. And when he was there, he was cool.

He'd always been able to keep his wits about him, whether he was facing down angry adults as a teenage umpire or treating a badly wounded Marine sergeant while on patrol in Iraq.

“There was nobody more confident than Christopher,” said his grandfather, William Hawkins of Rancho Bernardo.

Anderson was a fourth-generation Navy man who, in his year and a half of service, achieved his goal of earning more ribbons than his Navy SEAL father did in his 20-year career.

On Monday, Anderson, a Longmont, Colo., resident who spent much of his childhood in San Diego County, was killed in Ramadi, Iraq. A mortar shell tore through the fortified safe house where his unit was resting, Hawkins said.

Anderson, 24, was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He was deployed to Ramadi, in Anbar province, on Sept. 6.

He called his family weekly from Iraq.

“His spirits were good,” said his aunt, Sherry McDonald of Rancho Peñasquitos. “He was happy with what he was doing. He felt like he was accomplishing something. He felt like he needed to be there.”

Anderson was born to Rick and Debra Anderson on Jan. 22, 1982, at the Naval Medical Center, then called Balboa Naval Hospital, in Balboa Park.

The family lived in San Diego's South Bay, where Anderson attended Midway Baptist School.
In 1991, the Anderson family moved to Eugene, Ore., where Rick Anderson worked as a Navy recruiter. In 1995, the family moved to Longmont, Colo.

At age 14, Anderson became one of Colorado's youngest ever to be certified as a baseball umpire. His grandfather would travel from San Diego to take him to tournaments.

“I would sit behind the backstop and I would watch him,” Hawkins said. “The grown men would come screaming at him. And he would stand there and listen to them and say: 'Are you done? Now go back to your dugout and let's play ball.' ”

Anderson graduated from Longmont High School in 2000. He attended classes at the University of Colorado and held a range of jobs, from helping with his father's handyman business to being a salesman at Nordstrom and a bouncer at a bar.

He also thought about police work, or becoming a firefighter, and took emergency response courses.

“If he saw a wreck on the side of the road, he was the first to stop and help,” Hawkins said.

In August 2005, Anderson enlisted in the Navy. He threw himself into his training. While awaiting his Navy school starting date, he competed with Navy SEAL candidates and excelled in Navy academics.

At boot camp, he was the honor graduate, voted No. 1 in his class by his peers and senior staff. He went on to hospital corpsman medical trainingand advanced combat medical training.

In Iraq, “Christopher earned the affectionate title of 'Doc,' ” his father said in a statement. “This title is only given to Navy hospital corpsmen who have impressed their U.S. Marine Corps counterparts with medical excellence under field combat conditions.”

During Anderson's weekly calls from Iraq to his grandfather, the two men kept conversation light, ribbing each other like they always had.

“The only time I really heard him shook up was when his sergeant lost his legs to an IED,” Hawkins said, referring to improvised explosive devices. “Christopher patched him up and put the tourniquets on, took him to the base hospital. The surgeon there said it was the best patch job he'd ever seen come back off the front lines.”

While in Iraq, Anderson maintained his MySpace page. There, he showed his softer side, and his sense of humor, when describing the kind of woman he wanted to meet.

“I have been considered a hopeless romantic, so she better like a gentlemen and enjoy the finer things in life, and Mama has to like her, so she better like to shop to get along with her, she is addicted to Nordstrom,” he wrote.

Anderson is survived by his parents; brother, Kyle Anderson of Longmont, Colo.; maternal grandparents, William and Jeanette Hawkins of San Diego; and paternal grandmother, Margaret Anderson of Bessemer, Pa.

San Diego Tribune

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