VISITING  DAILY

Andrew Mykle Budenz graduated from San Diego State University in 2003 with a degree in Engineering.  Andrew completed pilot training and became a Marine pilot as the Aircraft Commander of the KC-130J.  Assigned to Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352 (VMGR-352) he made tours to Iraq in 2008 and Afghanistan in 2010 and had informed his family that he planned to make a career of the Marines.  In addition to his love of flying he also had a love of motorcycles and had the reputation of being an ultra-careful rider, the instructor of a base motorcycle safety class.  Unfortunately, on September 21, 2013, while riding his motorcycle on Palomar Mountain near San Diego, he lost control on a winding mountain road and was killed when thrown into the path of an oncoming vehicle. 

His wife, Jenn Budenz, had an old-fashioned courtship with her Marine.  They met long-distance through a mutual friend and struck up a correspondence in 2008 just before he deployed to Iraq for seven months.  They fell in love through letters, emails and an occasional web camera chat.  They finally saw each other in person three weeks after he returned to his Miramar base.  It was their first real date.  Six months later they were engaged and they married in San Diego on April 24, 2010. 

Her husband’s death was devastating to Jenn who was 12 weeks pregnant when he died.  Almost immediately following his death Jenn started making daily visits to Miramar National Cemetery to lay on her husband’s grave.  At the time of this writing she continues her daily visits and is now accompanied by her two-month old son, Andrew Jr., who she calls “A–J.”  She shades his car seat with an umbrella on warm afternoons and says he has his dad’s blue eyes.  She says that someday she may choose to stop visiting daily as her baby grows and his needs become more complex.  She doesn’t yet know when that time might come and says, “It’s therapy for me to be here with him.  It’s peaceful and now I have my own little family here.”

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)