By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

KENNER – While most people were preparing for a long Thanksgiving weekend Wednesday, the family of Lt. Col. Joseph Anthony Lucia III waited at Armstrong International Airport for their fallen hero to arrive back home.

Lucia, a Lutcher native and decorated Marine who was stationed at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island in Charleston, S.C., lost a year-and-a-half-long battle last Saturday with multiple myeloma, a rare forma of leukemia affecting plasma cells. He was 42.

In addition to about 25 family members from all across the River Parishes, a squadron of Marines welcomed Lucia’s body home with a touching salute as he was removed from the plane.

“It was a special sight to see,” said Lucia’s mother, Judy Petit. “Marines really take care of their own. It was very touching.”

Petit said Lucia grew up in Lutcher and LaPlace, attending St. Charles Catholic High School and Tulane University in New Orleans. In 1991, he joined the Marines through the Platoon Leaders Course and later moved on to the flight school in Pensacola, Fla., where he became a helicopter and fighter jet pilot.

“He was living his dream,” Petit said. “Since he was a boy, all he talked about was being a pilot. Every time we went out shopping, he would come home with a new model plane. He loved everything about them. Then, when he was a senior in high school, the movie ‘Top Gun’ came out, and that was it. He was won over.”

As a Marine pilot, Lucia flew helicopters, Cessnas and F-18s. He participated in air missions over the Arabian Gulf, Turkey, Kosovo, Albania, Iraq and the Adriatic Sea as a forward air controller with the 3rd Battalion 8th Marines, 2nd Marine Division. His family said he spent a great deal of time overseas but didn’t talk much about what was happening.

“I think we would ask, but he never told me about his job. He would never talk about it,” said Laura Lucia Wear, Lucia’s sister. “There was one night that he called just before a mission in Iraq. He said, ‘You need to pray for me that I make my target. If I miss my target a lot of innocent people are going to die.’ I told him that I knew he would hit it because he was so good at it. He was my hero.”

In 2008 he was assigned as executive officer at the Weapons and Field Training Battalion, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, at Parris Island. Petit said he was second in command of weapons and artillery at the base. It was at Parris Island where he would contract the rare disease.

“The disease is extremely rare, so rare that I don’t think any of us had heard of it,” Petit said. “It is a form of cancer that only usually affects older African-American men, so doctors couldn’t explain it.”

Upon diagnosis in July 2009, doctors had given Lucia about three months to live, but he was not satisfied with that. He resolved to fight it as hard as he could through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant

“He was a typical Marine about this,” said Michael Hoover, Lucia’s brother-in-law. “He was a fighter. I remember one night taking care of him while he was going through the chemotherapy. He just refused to get sick. I told him to just let it out, and he told me no. ‘If I do that,’ he said, ‘that means the cancer wins. I am not letting it win.’ He fought it to the end.”

Family members remembered Lucia as being very social and incredibly humorous.

“He was a very outgoing guy,” said Lucia’s aunt, Karen Poirrier. “I’d send him jokes at least once a week.”

Hoover said he was also a man who cared more about others than himself.

“It didn’t matter,” Hoover said. “He was more concerned about his wife, his kids and his family than his own health. That’s part of why he fought it so long.”

A visitation will be held today at St. Michael Catholic Church, 6476 Highway 44, Convent, from 8-11 a.m. A funeral Mass will follow at 11 a.m. The ceremony will include a singing of the National Anthem and an F/A 18 flyover.

Following the funeral, Lucia will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia at a later date.