Trip to Normandy gives Olympic wrestler new perspective on what great-grandfather endured

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — He paused to take a picture by the reflecting pool lined with well-groomed trees and walked past a flagpole flying an American flag high in the air.

At one of the first headstones he came to, a white marble cross about waist-high in the 11th row of Plot B at Normandy American Cemetery, Mason Parris stopped to study the name inscribed on its back.

Edwin C. Swinscoe

PFC 357 INF 90 DIV

Colorado June 21, 1944

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Parris perused the names on other headstones as he strolled somberly across the grass.

He snapped a photo of the gold lettering on the headstone of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the Brigadier General and son of former president Teddy Roosevelt, who died fighting in World War II, then walked to the chapel, said a quiet prayer “and just thanked all those guys for the sacrifices.”

“It’s so beautiful out here right now,” Parris said later as he sat atop a wall high above Omaha Beach overlooking the English Channel. “But I can only imagine the terrors and everything that happened on that day.”

Eighty years ago, on June 6, 1944, Parris’ great-grandfather, Vemont Marqua, experienced those terrors firsthand.

Marqua was part of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, when more than 150,000 Allied troops landed at five beachheads in northern France to start the end of World War II.

Last Tuesday, 10 days before he was set to wrestle in the biggest event of his life, Parris, an Olympic medal hopeful at 125 kg, joined four of his freestyle teammates and about two dozen other members of USA Wrestling on a day trip to Normandy from the team’s acclimation camp an hour east at Centre Sportif de Normandie in the picturesque town of Houlgate.

Two days after the Greco-Roman team took a similar tour, Parris and his teammates bused to Point du Hoc, the bluff that was home to a German command center on D-Day, then visited Omaha Beach on their way to the cemetery.

Parris, dressed in a white “United States of America” T-shirt and black Nike shorts, carried a black-and-white photograph of his great-grandfather in his backpack. His mother gave him the picture, which was displayed for years in his Lawrenceville, Indiana, home, before he left and she asked him to take a photo with it on the beach.

Parris posed for pictures with the old photograph for USA TODAY, then put the print in the sand.

“Definitely symbolically letting him touch that sand, be there again,” Parris said.

“I mean for me it was honoring him and just representing the things that he’s done and the sacrifices that he’s made for being my family,” Parris said. “I’m really glad that he was able to make it back alive. I don’t know if things would have been differently, if I would be here or not if he didn’t make it back. It’s great just being able to honor him and things that he and his brothers did for me.”

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A hero’s tale

Parris never met his great-grandfather, who died of cancer 20 years before he was born. And his mother, Shay Parris, said her grandpa never talked much about his time in the Army.

But Marqua’s name and history live on in newspaper clippings and World War II artifacts he brought home.

The family has a spiked German war helmet, iron cross and silk from a parachute it labeled in a scrap book as being shot down at Gela Beach, Italy, in 1943. They kept a letter he sent his brother from Sicily dated Aug. 21 of the same year, and a poem Marqua wrote from the battlefield titled, “Little Letter to God.” To this day, Parris’ grandmother still keeps a framed letter on the wall that Marqua wrote her when she was a little girl.

In the letter, Marqua, who was deployed overseas around the time she was born and didn’t return until she was 4, used sketches to convey some words and wrote he would catch a boat to see her “when the Germans stop the (bombing). That will B when all of them R (dead).” He drew a picture of a body covered with dirt to illustrate the last word.

The letter was dated March 25, 1945, less than two months before Germany surrendered.

“My mom said he never really talked about it and she never asked any questions, really,” Shay Parris said. “But she was born in ’41, so he didn’t see her until I think she was 4 or 5. Crazy.

“She just remembers when he came back and that she was calling her grandfather at the time her dad, so it took a while for him to get used to her and she said he always said it broke his heart that he wasn’t there for the first four years.”

Mason said he thinks his great-grandfather served in the 1st Infantry Division of the Army that was part of the group that stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day. A newspaper clipping from the Cincinnati Enquirer has helped fill in the blanks.

The article says Marqua fought in the African, Sicilian and Tunisian campaigns, “will be in Germany with the First Army” in 1945, and “was sent to England and landed in Normandy on D-Day.” He received the Presidential Citation for volunteering for extra duty on D-Day and was commissioned a second lieutenant in July 1944, according to the clipping.

Parris said he called his mother and grandmother to learn more about his great-grandfather before last week's trip and found out Marqua was a devout Catholic and excellent artist who was nicknamed “Frenchie” — his parents were born in France — and could “whittle a bar of soap (into) anything that you could ask for.”

“It’s amazing to be at the same beach that my great-grandfather was and just all the history that's here, and it just makes me really proud of him and his brothers that came over here and fought for my freedom that allow me to go out and compete in the Olympics 80 years later,” Parris said. “It's just super, super amazing and super exciting for me that the things that they did for me to be able to freely be over here now.”

'An amazing and awesome destiny'

Wrestling at the Olympics begins Monday with qualification matches for both Greco-Roman and women’s freestyle, and Parris will head to Paris this week to try and bring the U.S. its second straight gold at 125 kg.

Parris is the No. 3 seed in his weight class behind Iran’s Amir Hossein Zare and Georgia’s Geno Petriashvili. Gable Steveson, the gold medal winner in Tokyo at 125 kg, did not attend U.S. Olympic trials this spring and is currently in training camp with the Buffalo Bills.

Parris, the 2023 Hodge Trophy winner as the best collegiate wrestler after an undefeated senior season at Michigan, said he feels “the best I’ve ever felt in my life” heading into competition. His personal coach Josh Churella, a Michigan assistant, said trips like the one to Normandy help keep him in the right frame of mind.

“It brings it in perspective that they get to do what they love to do on a daily basis and if it wasn’t for the men that sacrificed their lives like the ones that did here, none of this would be possible,” Churella said. “I think at the end you know it’s just a sport, it’s not life or death, it’s a little different. Obviously when you’re in it, it’s your whole world, but I think this is a great time where we can see what that perspective is, and I think if anything it just gives you extra motivation the next couple weeks.”

That goes for Parris and other members of the U.S. team that made the trip to Normandy: Zain Retherford (65 kg), Kyle Dake (74 kg), Aaron Brooks (86 kg) and Kyle Snyder (97 kg).

At Omaha Beach, Dake picked up a rock and wrote “K Dake” in the sand.

“You come here and it just feels different,” Dake said. “It doesn't feel like a normal beach. And really, I think the biggest thing was I just wanted to touch the sand. Just feel it. What did it - it feels normal, but you kind of put a different emotion behind it. I could draw my name in on a million beaches and it would never be like this.”

Parris’ parents have found inspiration in the serendipity of his journey: His last name sounds like the name of the city he’s about to compete in. He’s 24 and it’s the year 2024. And, of course, that his first Olympics are in the same country his great-grandfather helped preserve 80 years ago.

Parris called it “an amazing and awesome destiny that 80 years later I’m here in the same area that he was to kind of feel and honor him and his brothers, the service that they put in.”

“I think everything’s just kind of aligned perfectly for me,” he said. “It’s kind of all converged at once. I’m here, over here in Paris and I also have history with my great-grandfather, and I think everything happens for a reason and I think this just gave me another great reason just to be over here and be able to honor him – him and his brothers. So it’s been an amazing experience.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett.

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