Andre Whyte didn’t recognize the number that appeared on his phone on Father’s Day five years ago. It was a Maryland area code, a number he’d never seen before, and he almost let it go. But when he answered, he heard a familiar voice on the other end, a young man 7,000 miles away in one of the world’s most dangerous cities. It was his son, Nicholas, a lance corporal in the Marines, calling to say “hello” from Ramadi, Iraq.
His son was worried. A friend in his unit had been killed, and violence in Ramadi was escalating. But Nicholas could not escape the danger. His unit was being deployed in a couple of days, and he told his father not to worry if he didn’t hear from him. So Nicholas said goodbye to his father, and Andre told his son what he told him every time they had spoken during Nicholas’ tour of duty.
“The last thing I told him,” Andre said, “was I love you, and I’ll talk to you soon.”
Three days after they said goodbye, Andre Whyte got another call, this one from a number he did recognize. It was a friend who worked with him at the Department of Corrections, who told Andre he needed to go home as soon as he could. Confused, Andre asked why. His friend told him the Marines were at the front door of the house of his ex-wife, Nicholas’ mother.
“I kind of knew,” Andre said. “I had at first hoped he was just injured, but they don’t come to your house if he’s just injured.”
It was 4 p.m. on June 21, 2006. Nicholas was supposed to turn 22 two days later. He was supposed to come home in September for his father’s birthday. Instead, Andre Whyte would head to his ex-wife’s house on East 51st Street in Brooklyn to meet with officers from the United States Marine Corps. It was there outside the front door, with the mother refusing to talk to the captain, sergeant and chaplain who had been sent to the house, that Andre learned about the death of Lance Cpl. Nicholas J. Whyte. He had been killed in action, they told him, by a sniper’s bullet. Andre tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
“My worst fears were realized,” he said.
The Marines told Andre about Nicholas’ death. The questions he had—whether Nicholas was in pain when he died, whether he had any last words, how his final moments unfolded—they couldn’t answer. Then they departed, leaving Andre to contemplate a life without the son he had talked with just a few days before, and with whom he would never talk again.
“He did exactly the things he wanted to do,” Andre said. “If you took away the TV, he’d read a book. Take away his GameBoy, he’d get a book. He found ways to entertain himself.”
This extended through childhood, adolescence and all the way into the final years of Nicholas’ life, when he decided, soon after the American invasion of Iraq, that he wanted the kind of challenge only the Marines could provide. Nicholas didn’t tell his parents about his decision to enlist. Like so many things in his life, he went ahead and did it. That was that.
“I asked him once, why? Why would you do this when you have the opportunity to do so many other things?” Andre said. “And he told me that he wanted people in other countries to have the same opportunities he had.”
The Marines took Nicholas to Haiti and then to Iraq for a first tour in Fallujah. Each time his son left, Andre wondered whether and in what state Nicholas would come home. That worry intensified during the second tour, when Nicholas told his father that he was nervous about being back in Iraq.
“One of the things I’ve sort of come to grips with is that every life comes with a death sentence,” Andre said, struggling to keep his voice even. “Nobody gets to live forever.”
“I’m unable to get rid of them, and I don’t think I ever will,” Andre said.
There are the dogtags that Nicholas wore bearing his name and rank and serial number. Andre wears those around his neck, the same as Nicholas did. There are the four commemorative coins issued to Nicholas by the Marines. Three of those coins were for the tours that Nicholas had served, and they sit in a special case with four open slots. The fourth coin—deep red in color and bearing the Marines’ globe-and-anchor insignia—was given to Andre after Nicholas’ death. Like the dogtags, he carries that coin with him.
Then there is the watch that Andre keeps on the dresser in his bedroom, a metal Seiko, silver in color with a dark blue face. It was a birthday gift from father to son, given to Nicholas after he completed his training on Parris Island. Nicholas didn’t wear the watch on duty; it was expensive, and he didn’t want to damage it. But he would show it to his father, to prove that it was still working and pristine.
“He was this kid that never gave any value to monetary things,” Andre said. “So whenever he saw me, he’d show me the watch and say, ‘Dad, I have it and it still works.’”
“He was everything a father would want a son to be,” he said.
“When you go there and look around, there’s a little section where there are always flowers,” Andre said. “That section is Iraq. The parents leave flowers for their kids. They haven’t been forgotten, it’s so recent.”
Andre leaves flowers when he visits Nicholas’ grave.
“The pain reminds me of exactly what I did lose,” he said. “It’s almost like you’re happy to feel the pain, because you know you lost something special and know you haven’t forgotten anything about him.”
Andre sees the world differently now.
“I don’t look at the flag the same,” he said. “You don’t listen to the National Anthem the same.”
Andre is happy for those families whose sons and daughters will come be home by the end of the year, knowing they will be spared his fate.
“For the parents watching the news every night hoping their child is safe and doesn’t get killed or can come home for Christmas, agendas don’t mean anything,” Andre said. “I was happy to hear they’re coming home, because I think of the families that won’t be like me.”
But three other days are the most painful. There’s Father’s Day, the last time he and his son spoke. There’s Nicholas’ birthday, the one that was just days away when he died. And there’s the day in the middle of summer when Andre Whyte learned that his son was gone.
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