Newly Revealed Marine Poet Makes a Huge Impact on YouTube
Poem: And She Called? "It's about the military service and the reason we do things. We just defend the country, no questions asked. As a family, we do it. The poem was just utmost admiration and respect for the individuals that are there. ...They've answered the country's call."
(North Carolina)?Staff Sgt. Lawrence E. Dean II, 30, is a Marine, and a poet, stationed at Cherry Point base in North Carolina. According to a FOXNews report, he writes and performs rap-style poetry using the stage name "Life."
Reporter Catherine Donaldson-Evans notes that when the YouTube video of Dean reciting the poem he wrote about defending America's freedom garnered close to 400,000 views in just two days earlier this week, he decided to reveal his identity and speak to FOXNews.com.
"It almost leaves you speechless," he said on Wednesday of the reaction to his poetry. "Just to see it affected that many people?if it made that many people think, it was worth every bit of that three minutes... How do you explain the unexplainable? It's a blessing. A lot of people that have to answer that call appreciate it. That's bigger than me."
The poem he wrote?which begins, "And she called..."?isn't about the experience of fighting a war. It's about what the armed forces do. "It's about the military service and the reason we do things. We just defend the country, no questions asked. As a family, we do it. The poem was just utmost admiration and respect for the individuals that are there. ... They've answered the country's call."
Says Donaldson-Evans: "He was compelled to write the poem about two-and-a-half years ago, he said, when his grandmother asked him one day what would make him go to war."
"The answer I can give is just, 'Because she called,'" said Dean, referring to America. "She called," Dean says in the videotaped poem as he stands before a U.S. Marine Corps crest hanging on the barracks wall. "From the bowels of Ground Zero/she sent this 911 distress signal/because she was in desperate need of a hero/and didn't have time to decipher what to call 'em/so she called 'em all her children/and said, 'I am America, and I'm calling on the land of the free'/So they answered ... /You see, someone attempted to choke the voice/of the one who gave us the right for choice/and now she was callin'/And somebody had to answer/Who was going to answer?/So they did."
"Everybody loves him," said one of his close friends in the Marines, who asked not to be identified. "He has got to be the most motivated and inspirational person I have ever met in my life. He speaks from the heart."
