FROM PATCHES NEARBY: Enumclaw Boy Inspired by 9/11 Now a Marine

Editor’s note: The following is one of 911 articles done under the headline “Touched By Terror: Patch Remembers 9/11 in 911 Snapshots. For more go to http://huff.to/riv8zM

Jake Luedke was in the fourth grade on Sept. 11, 2001. His mom woke him and talked about two planes hitting the Twin Towers, but he didn’t understand what was going on.

Once he got to his baby-sitter’s house they talked more about it. She kept him home from school because she wanted him to feel safe. Luedke remembers wanting to give blood and being told he was too young.

About 10 a.m. he decided to make a sign that said, “Honk if you’re an American.” His family is patriotic with relatives in the Army, Navy and Air Force. He stood outside the home in Kent for a few hours. Later, he went to his dad’s house in Puyallup and held up the sign for another seven hours.

“It was fun,” Luedke said. “An Army captain gave me his cover (hat). I didn’t know what it was but it had two silver bars. And he gave me a lollipop. A lady gave me a T-shirt and some candy. Others stopped and said thank you and were shocked how young I was.”

The local paper heard what Luedke was doing and did a story about him. Asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he said, “Be in the U.S. military.”

Now 19, Luedke, of Enumclaw, is a Marine serving at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Luedke waivered on his goal when he first started high school, thinking he never really did want to do it. But when he got into 10th grade, he talked to a recruiter and got back on track.

“College was not in my eyesight,” he said.

Luedke said he studied every branch in the military and decided late in his junior year that he wanted to be a Marine.

“I saw them as the best, the toughest," he said. "I wanted to prove that I could do it. I was not a popular kid in school. Few thought I had what it takes."

The training was tough. Three months of boot camp and a month of combat training, then three and a half months to learn his trade. Luedke has been in the Marines for a year and a half now. He is a heavy-equipment operator, driving dozers, backhoes and the like that weigh up to 20,000 pounds.

Luedke has a lot of options. He has thought about going to school to be an officer. But he seems more interested in being deployed next year overseas.

So where would he like to go?

“Afghanistan,” he said.

That sounds like something someone inspired by 9/11 would say.