During combat in Iraq’s Al Anbar province, an enemy incendiary device killed Marine Lance Corporal Kane Funke, 20, a frontline machine gunner, on August 13, 2004.   A member of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, Kane was fulfilling a childhood dream as he planned to be a Marine “since he was eight years old,” recalls his mother, Stephanie Funke, pictured below left with Families United founder Chuck Larson.  “After [the attacks of] September 11, he tracked the stories in the newspapers and highlighted sections; I found the clippings in an old suitcase after he died.”  Determined to “protect his family and his country, he was doing it in the best and most noble way he knew how.”

News

• "He wanted to fight for our country," said his aunt, Teresa Funke of Ronan, Mont. "After 9/11 he had a mission, that's what he was gonna do. He was very proud to be a Marine and to fight for our country. That's totally what he wanted his whole heart was into it." Seattle Times, 8/15/04
  

• Read "What Matters," an essay about her brother Kane, by Stephanie's daughter Ashley.
  

• Read a feature article on Mrs. Funke from Montana Woman magazine here and here and here and here and here.