Friends, loved ones say goodbye to Marine

He was killed Jan. 28 in a Humvee accident in Iraq

By: By Laura Giovanelli | Journal Reporter
Published: February 07, 2006

HIGH POINT --

HIGH POINT - The sky turned gray after the gun salute.
It was the same color as Cpl. Felipe Barbosa's coffin. The same color as the single dog tag, shiny as a new quarter, that his high-school friend Alex Duarte rubbed with his thumb as he stood at Barbosa's grave site in the Floral Garden Memorial Park Cemetery yesterday.
"There's only three," Duarte said. "His brother has the other two."
Barbosa, 21, of High Point was killed Jan. 28 in a Humvee accident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was an infantryman with the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment based at Camp LeJeune and had been in Iraq since September, Duarte said.
The executive pastor of Green Street Baptist Church, Robert Steele, estimated that between 500 and 600 people attended Barbosa's funeral in High Point yesterday afternoon.
After the service, Duarte stood a few feet away from his friend's grave. Then he went closer to the engraved vault cover for Barbosa's coffin and looked at the letters and numbers that spelled out his friend's name, date of birth and date of death.
Duarte said that Barbosa had written letters to him from Iraq. "He believed in the cause, but he knew there was a better way of doing things," Duarte said.
Duarte met Barbosa at High Point Central High School, just a few years after Barbosa, a Brazilian native, came to the United States with his mother, father and brother in 1994. They moved first to Boston, then came to High Point to be near family, Duarte said.
Barbosa grew from a slight, olive-skinned boy into a man who wore the stern mask of a Marine even when he posed with family for snapshots. A member of the Marine Junior ROTC, he wanted to be a soldier for as long as his friends could remember, mainly because he had relatives who had served in the Brazilian army, Duarte said.
His short life held much: He graduated from Andrews High School in High Point, Duarte said. He was married to his wife, Christina, for 18 months.
Barbosa didn't become a citizen until last year. He talked about wanting to be a Marine and soldier for his adopted country much longer, and he was buried with that in mind. His funeral service was peppered with patriotic songs, from Lee Greenwood's "I'm Proud to Be an American" to "My Country 'Tis of Thee."
If he became uncertain of war once he was a part of it, he believed in his Baptist faith with rock-solid conviction. His dream was to go to college and become a missionary after his military service, his mother, Iraci Dunbar, told the Greensboro News & Record last week. And during his funeral service yesterday, Barbosa was remembered as a reverent, evangelical man who went on mission trips.
He went to war-torn Iraq with a similar attitude of service.
Last year, he wrote to his church, asking for someone to search for bandannas with Psalm 91 written on them after he met an Iraqi private who was looking for one. His church had the bandannas made.
"No harm will befall you; no disaster will come near your tent," the bandannas read, "for He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways."
"It's hard to share Jesus here, especially with the kind of job I do," he said in a letter from Iraq to his church.
"He was my nephew, he was my loved one, he was my friend, and he was my buddy," said Dean Charlton, Barbosa's uncle, "and nobody can ask for better than that."
Barbosa's funeral ended as a pair of polished Marines picked up the American flag from his casket with their gloved fingers. They folded it into a thick triangle with the precision of origami artists.
Then, the heels of the Junior ROTC students in attendance clicked on the asphalt as they lined up to leave. Some of them, in their crisp black uniforms, looked like younger versions of Barbosa.