Navy And Marine

Jason Aron Collins, an aviation technician first class in the Navy, died in a motorcycle accident July 3 in Sigonella, Sicily. He was 25. A native of Baltimore, Mr. Collins graduated from Mergenthaler High School in 1997. He immediately enlisted in the Navy and in five years had become a petty officer first class. He was the recipient of two Navy and Marine Corps achievement medals and earned his enlisted aviation warfare specialist pin while serving aboard the USS Carl Vinson. "He was just at the beginning of a long and important career," his commanding officer, Capt.

The Naval Reserve members who rescued passengers from the harbor water shuttle that capsized near Fort McHenry two weeks ago will be awarded medals for their quick-thinking heroics. The commanding officer of the Naval Reserve Center in Baltimore said an official ceremony has not been arranged but that he expects a medal service to be held next month when reservists are drilling at the center, which is near Fort McHenry. "Right now we're looking at some time in April," Cmdr. Jim McGovern said.

Naval Academy Superintendent John R. Ryan has proposed increasing the size of the military college's student body by 10 percent, to 4,400 midshipmen. Ryan told the academy's oversight panel Monday that an increase of 400 midshipmen would help offset what he said were fleetwide shortages of Navy and Marine officers. Though the academy may have to expand the faculty and buy new equipment, Ryan said that would be less expensive than producing new officers through college ROTC programs or the Naval Officer Candidate School.

A Navy SEAL from Edgewater was killed in last week's Black Hawk helicopter crash in Afghanistan, defense officials said Monday. Petty Officer 1st Class Patrick D. Feeks, 28, was one of seven Americans killed in the crash Thursday during a firefight with insurgents northeast of Kandahar, officials said. Four Afghans on the helicopter also were killed. The incident was one of the deadliest air disasters in the nearly 11-year-old war. The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting the helicopter down.

On Wednesday June 14, 2006, FRANCIS B. "Babe" MIKULA of St. Cloud, FL, ad formerly of Crisfield, MD, and Dundalk, died at his home in St. CLoud. An Army, Navy and Merchant Marine Veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam, and a retiree of General Motors. He is survived by his longtime companion, La Verna Keene, their grandchildren, CJ and Lindsey Tyler, his daughter, Anita Mikula-Smith, his son-in-law, Jeff Smith, mother-in-law, Dorothy Tyler, sister, Frances Mikula Spence, and several nieces and nephews.

Naval Academy officials expressed concern yesterday over a decline in minority applicants from last year, though the decline was consistent with an overall drop in applications to the Annapolis military college. Minority applications for the academy's class of 2009 fell 22.5 percent from the year before, the school's dean of admissions told the school's oversight board. Although that drop only slightly exceeds an overall 21.9 percent decline in applications to the school, Dean David A. Vetter said the academy will step up its minority recruitment efforts beginning this summer.

Please forgive the irrepressible grins, the sunny outlook and the other outward signs of deep satisfaction displayed this week by fans of U.S. Naval Academy football. Navy's 46-44 triple-overtime victory over the Fighting Irish on Saturday in South Bend, Ind., was bound to have a lasting effect. Beating a rival once every 43 years will do that. The Notre Dame-Navy match-up is one of the more lopsided annual events in college football. One fields a team of high school all-Americans, the other with future Navy and Marine Corps officers.

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 6,000 donated gallons of Haagen Dazs ice cream, 11,300 portable radios, 5,000 Sony "Walkmans," 612,900 fruit juice boxes, 455 camcorders and 250,000 blank videotapes, 20,000 Frisbees and 100,000 packages of M&Ms have already been delivered to Persian Gulf troops.In addition, a number of department stores, restaurants and other organizations are picking up shipping costs for donated gifts.Mail shipments to the Persian Gulf are running at about 382,000 pounds a day, said Dennis Hauck, international military mail coordinator for the Postal Service.

SAN DIEGO -- An undetermined number of U.S. Marines at the Camp Pendleton base are being investigated on allegations of posing in homosexual pornographic movies and distributing the material through the mail, officials at the base confirmed yesterday.The investigation surfaced in the Oceanside, Calif., police department, whose child-abuse unit heard through an informant that between two dozen and 200 Marines were being photographed and videotaped having sex with teen-age boys at a private residence in north San Diego County.

Christopher Custer, the 21-year-old Marine lance corporal who was killed in a car crash last weekend in Pennsylvania, had recently returned from Iraq, where he served as a combat engineer, according to information released yesterday by the Marine Corps. Lt. Clark Carpenter, a public information officer at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where Custer was stationed, said the Bel Air resident was on three weeks leave, which is typical for Marines returning from duty in Iraq. Carpenter said that Custer had received a half-dozen awards since joining the Marines in November 2000, including the Navy and Marine Corps achievement medal.