Spc. Marlon P. Jackson, 25, a Jersey City resident known among his loved ones as a likable, well-mannered young man, was killed Nov. 11 several hours after suffering injuries when an improvised bomb exploded on the side of a road outside Baghdad in Tampa, Iraq. A combat engineer for the A Company in the 94th Engineer Battalion of the 130th Engineer Brigade, he was scheduled to be buried today, Nov. 23, in his native Jamaica.
Jackson was remembered last week as a quiet, introspective yet outgoing young man who took great interest in his music and sports hobbies, said Vanessa Selby, 43, a Greenville resident who served as Jackson’s surrogate mother in Jersey City after his adoptive parents left the city.
Born in Mandeville, Jamaica, Jackson was adopted by Leighton Jackson and Lois LaGrenade. Leighton Jackson, who worked for the municipal courts of New York City when he lived in Jersey City, now teaches law in Barbados. LaGrenade, a doctor, lives in Chevy Chase, Md.
Selby met Jackson in 1992 while working as the front desk attendant at Glenwood Avenue’s Gotham Towers apartment building, where he lived with his adoptive parents.
“Being the head front door person for three years, I knew his every move,” Selby said Thursday night. “He could’ve been waiting for someone in the lobby for hours and he would never say anything other than good morning and good night. I would ask, ‘Why are you so quiet sitting there?’ He would tell me about what he was doing. He would say that he would go deejay at parties. He would go up there [to Hudson Catholic High School] and help them deejay and let them use some of his music.”
Because of his Jamaican roots and his frequent return trips back to the island, Jackson was a reggae connoisseur and would bring back music that was not yet available in the United States. He would also gently try to get her to listen to some of the local Caribbean radio stations, Selby said, saying the music is beautiful and that she would appreciate it.
When Jackson was introduced to Selby’s two similarly aged children, Khalia, 25, and Kajbir, 22, a more intimate relationship blossomed and Jackson slowly became a part of the Selby family. Jackson’s August birthday was near to Khalia Selby’s date of birth, and the two had joint parties from 1996 until Jackson left for the Army in 1999.
Ambitions cut short
Jackson was strongly committed to succeeding through his own hard work, Selby said.
After graduating from Hudson Catholic High School in 1997 and spending approximately two semesters at Hudson County Community College studying political science, Jackson was unable to find a job to pay his way through school. The best option available to him at the time, Selby said, was joining the Armed Forces.
Neither he nor any of his loved ones imagined that he would be killed on active duty when he enlisted in the relatively peaceful time of 1999.
After doing basic training at Missouri’s Fort Leonard Wood and service at Hawaii’s Schofield Army Base, Jackson was deployed to Vilseck, Germany, as part of the 94th Engineer Battalion. But during his breaks before shipping off to Europe, Jackson would return to Jersey City and seek out the Selbys.
“He didn’t have to ask if he could come,” Selby said. “He just showed up. Wherever I moved, from 1992 to now, he found me, from one place to another place. When I moved to Bayonne, he found me in Bayonne. No matter what, he knew I was going to be at the [Gotham Towers] job. And he always went to Gotham Towers.”
Jackson came to the Selby home last year for Thanksgiving, and Selby bought him an Amtrak ticket to go see adoptive mother LaGrenade in Maryland. He went for Thanksgiving Day but returned later that night.
In that short holiday break last year, Jackson also married a Brooklyn woman he had been seeing, Selby said. The woman, whose identity Selby could not recall last week, was a Caribbean native whom Jackson had known when he was living in Jamaica.
His true family
It’s clear that Vanessa Selby acted as a sort of surrogate mother to Jackson, and he viewed her two children as siblings, she said. And as a mother is proud of her own children, Selby looks at Jackson as her own son, having beamed with maternal pride at his accomplishments. She is also as grief-stricken as any other woman would be in her situation, similarly feeling that profound sense of loss when a loved one is killed.
Despite the pain, she and her two children are trying to focus on positive memories of Jackson while mourning the time that will not be spent in his presence.
Kajbir Selby, his mother said, is absolutely devastated at the news and has become a recluse in his grief. Jackson figured prominently in Kajbir Selby’s plans for the future, and now he has to go on living without his close friend.
“My son and Marlon had a lot of plans,” Selby said. “They were the best of friends. [Kajbir Selby] looked at him like an older brother. He’s very out of it over this. He wouldn’t talk about it to anybody. The day before he left, Marlon gave [Kajbir] a haircut and shaved his beard. They made promises to each other. They were going to get an apartment together when Marlon came back. Marlon was also going to take Kajbir to the clubs for the first time. My son now says that now he has no one to go to the clubs with. He wanted to do that with Marlon.”
Added Selby, “They were very, very close. They played basketball together [at Lincoln Park and at School 28 in the Heights]. They would team up on another team and come back and laugh, saying they tore it up.”
A call to a Chevy Chase number listed as belonging to an “L. LaGrenade” went unreturned as of press time.
Letters home to Jersey City
Jackson also repeatedly sent notes, cards and letters home to various members of the Selby residence, letting them know where he was and how he felt about his experiences. Selby family members were also able to discern from his handwriting and the language he used his inner feelings, which he rarely expressed.
“I know he didn’t like Iraq,” Selby said. “He liked it in Germany and in Hawaii. I could tell by the letters and the way he wrote. He had the most beautiful penmanship, and his writing got poorer as letters kept coming. I’d get letters back to back, and I knew from the date he wrote on them. Some were written just three days after the other one. And toward the end he wrote in chicken scratch, so much so that it looked like he was writing in the dark under a flashlight.”
After spending some time in Kuwait, Jackson was deployed to Iraq in February 2003. He camped out for a while at Baghdad International Airport, Selby said, and he said he couldn’t wait to get shipped back to Germany.
Jackson enjoyed his time in Europe and expressed a desire to travel the rest of the continent, Selby said. The culture in Germany appealed to his refined tastes, Selby said, and he enjoyed the availability of custom-made clothing in Europe.
His like for custom-made clothing reflected his attitude about dress in Jersey City, Selby added. When his peers in high school and afterward were wearing baggy clothing, Jackson would instead opt to wear properly-fitting attire. Taking great care with his own appearance, Jackson would always groom himself to match the way he carried himself – as a mature, soft-spoken gentleman.
“He wanted to look older than what he was,” Selby said. “He acted more mature than his age. And he always thanked you; you never had to ask him to say the blessings at table. I never had to tell him to take the garbage out. I never had to ask him to wash the dishes.”
A Catholic, Jackson also regularly attended Mass at St. Aidan’s Church in McGinley Square, next to his alma mater.
One memory of Jackson that Selby said she will always keep is when Jackson rescued her when she was caught in the middle of a big water leak at Gotham Towers.
“I’ll never forget that one day, it was like a valve came off a water pipe in the laundry room and water was shooting out like it was a fire hydrant,” Selby said. “Marlon came out of nowhere and just rescued me. I don’t know how he was able to do what he did, but he did.”
Selby said instances like that reminded her that Jackson was a goal-oriented, hard-working young man with a heart of gold.
“He wanted to grow,” she added. “He just wanted to grow. He wanted to try to be responsible, to become a responsible adult.”