Watching TV news and Hollywood action movies is about as close as you’ll come today to experiencing the fear and threat of terrorism on Kaua’i. One way to grasp what it’s like to live amidst the daily threat of being
Watching TV news and Hollywood action movies is about as close as you’ll come today to experiencing the fear and threat of terrorism on Kaua’i.
One way to grasp what it’s like to live amidst the daily threat of being attacked by a terrorist through a Kaua’i resident’s perspective is to read a new book by ‘Ele’ele resident and local pastor Tom Iannucci.
Iannucci, who leads the Breathe of Life Christian Ministries in Lihu’e, served as a marine guard at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in the mid-1980s in the years following the deadly blast that killed hundreds of marines in a Beirut barracks.
The friendly, but firm, pastor who speaks with a New York accent tells what it’s like to live in constant danger from terrorist attack. He tells of the dangers faced by embassy guards while on duty in Beirut, and when outside the marine compound where he lived, in “Beirut – God’s Boot Camp,” a book published in 2002 by Baltimore-based publisher America House.
“The book takes you first person into the middle of it,” he says, into the mind of a “young marine and young Christian stuck in a war zone, walking through that day by day.”
His first-person story is realistic and includes an anecdote about an off-duty drive with his marine buddies that accidentally veers into no man’s land in Beirut, resulting in a show down with gun-toting terrorists that could have ended with his death, or capture as a hostage.
“Being at the embassy in Beirut changed my life,” Iannucci says. “Being an American marine on hostile soil changed my personal outlook on being an American, and on being a Christian.”
He says the book’s recent release is timely, offering “a post 9/11 insight into the fear and uncertainty from terrorism and the threat of war.”
Iannucci grew up not far from the World Trade Center, in a town on Long Island in New York, and lost a classmate in the blast.
“It broke my heart to see what happened, I never thought I’d see that happen in my country,” he says. “It was one of the hardest days of my life when I couldn’t get home.”
He says though he wrote “Beirut – God’s Boot Camp” prior to the terrorist attacks on America, it’s turned out that the book is providing answers for those who suffered due to the tragedy, and for those who feel threatened by terrorism.
“That’s what the book is for, for people who suffered in 9/11; the Lord will heal them, give them hope and security,” he says.
A sub-theme of the book is the story of Iannucci’s marriage to his wife D’Lissa, a Kaua’i girl who grew up on the Westside and is the daughter of Duke and Millie Wellington.
The couple met in the 1980s when D’Lissa was a Hawai’i model working on a Japanese TV show and her husband was an guard at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. Her career in Japan came about through the advice of her close friend Dondi Ho, the Kapa’a-based fashion designer and daughter of entertainer Don Ho.
“I was going to school at Kapiolani Community College, and Dondi encouraged me to sign up with Gypsy Norton. The first day at the school I was thrown into a Japanese ice cream commercial. I got the modeling job and it opened the doors for me.”
“The model and the marine,” is how D’Lissa titles the couple’s romance in Japan that led to their marriage and Iannucci’s introduction to Kaua’i.
The couple were engaged during her then fiancee’s tour of duty in Beirut. Iannucci says their relationship was a driving force behind his survival during his year of living dangerously.
“(That time) was a journey of my life from being a self-reliant person to knowing that by myself I can’t accomplish much,” he says. “You can only rely on God, you can’t change the course of life, whether people hate you or want to kill you. Being engaged, (I was always thinking) am I going to make it back?”
He says during the months he spent living in the middle of one of the world’s most dangerous cities he dreamed of one day living in peace on Kaua’i.
“All I could think of was Hanalei, someplace peaceful,” he says.
The publication of the book is opening doors for the Lihu’e pastor to lecture and teach occasionally on the mainland with a ministry aimed at veterans. He is now also working with a chaplain in San Diego and may get a chance to speak to troops on their way to the possible Mid-East Iraq war. There’s also a men’s retreat in Seattle in March, as well as a possible July 4 talk before an Enduring Freedom veterans gathering, also in Seattle.
Breathe of Life Christian Ministries is located on Rice Street in the warehouse next to the Lihue Bowling Center. The book is available on Amazon.com and through PublishAmerica.com or through the church.
– TGI Editor Chris Cook can be reached at mailto:ccook@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 227).
