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I have many alerts set with Google. I caught am alert today for Canon & NJ. With my own son on his way to boot camp in a week, through the years many have sacrficed their lives for our freedoms.

WOODLAND PARK, N.J. (WTW) — Staff Sgt. Oscar Canon lived in constant motion — an athlete and a Marine, raised in Colombia, Florida, Texas and New Jersey. He served two tours of duty in Iraq, fighting in some of the war's bloodiest battles. Not even a 2004 insurgent assault, which nearly claimed his left leg and his life, could stop the Dumont High School graduate.

After more than seven years and 80 surgeries performed after the attack to try to save the leg, Canon died last month after lapsing into a coma at a naval hospital in Oceanside, Calif. Though his death is still under investigation, it appears to be connected to an infection in his leg.

The military considers it a combat death.

Canon was also marked by fierce determination. He kept the leg when friends and family said it would be better to amputate. He returned to the Marines as a weapons trainer. He longed to play football with his young son.

But today, those same friends and family are wondering if that fighting instinct, and the measures Canon took to save what he called his "million-dollar leg" may have cost him his life.

"There was no length he would not go to," said Amanda Barbaro, a volunteer with the Illinois non-profit Wounded Heroes who became close friends with Canon. "He did three times as much therapy as he was supposed to. He did whatever they told him to do times 10.

"It's sad because he fought so hard and what ends up taking his life is an infection," she said.

Canon, whose many decorations included a Purple Heart and a good conduct medal with two Bronze Stars, was laid to rest last week with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, surrounded by friends and family from across the country.

"He had a genuine concern for others," said his uncle, Julian Canon. "He protected people. He offered his life for the other guys."

Oscar Canon was born in Colombia in 1982. An only child, raised by a single mother — his father, relatives said, was scarcely in the picture — Canon moved between family homes, never staying in one place for more than a few years. He moved to Miami at age 6, and later arrived in New Jersey, where he attended elementary school and played baseball in Edgewater before relocating to Texas.

Canon and his mother, Maria, moved back to New Jersey in 1997, settling into a small apartment on Grant Avenue in Dumont. He entered Dumont High School as a sophomore, playing soccer and running track, where he formed a bond with his coach, Marty Caspare.

"He was a little bit mischievous," said Caspare, a former Dumont councilman. "He wanted to know what would make him a better pole-vaulter, but I wanted him to be a better person."

He did not expect his words of guidance would resonate.

Canon joined the Marines right out of high school in 2000, serving first in the Philippines and then Iraq. Caspare lost touch with him until one day, years later, Canon walked into the school gym.

"He said to me, 'Coach, you changed my life,'?" Caspare said recently. "I was shocked. You say things to kids, and you don't know what impact you'll have."

Still more shocking, Caspare said, was the story Canon told him of his injuries, suffered in September 2004 in Fallujah, then in the throes of a violent insurgency.

It was just days into Canon's second Iraq deployment with the 3rd Batallion in the 5th Marine Regiment. Out on patrol, Caspare said, Canon heard a bomb go off in front of him — he hit the road and grabbed his pistol, firing wildly in front of him.

Canon's leg had been shattered. He had suffered extensive internal injuries and damage to his left arm.

In his hospital bed, Canon had a choice: to remain in the Marines, he needed not only to keep his leg, but to stage an improbable recovery so he could pass the physicals required for duty. The alternative, a full amputation just below his left hip, would mean less risk, but the end of his military career.

Canon had already made up his mind. "He was going to fight for that leg," said his cousin, Angela Castillo.

Over the next six years, Canon underwent 80 operations in an extensive limb reconstruction. Doctors used muscles from his stomach and other parts of his body to rebuild his leg. His skin was stretched by balloons and pulled over cadaver muscles implanted in his leg, a process that creates substantial risk of infection. He spent dozens of hours each week in physical therapy.

The process was as novel as it was expensive — Canon's medical care cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, all covered by the military.

"He was among the few, possibly the first, to have a complete limb salvage," said Peggy Baker, the founder and president of Operation First Response, who befriended Canon in December 2004.

Canon benefited from tremendous medical advances that have helped extend the lives and livelihoods of many soldiers, but which can keep patients cycling in and out of hospitals, on and off addictive medications. Success, Baker said, depends on attitude.

"Oscar didn't complain very often," Baker said. "His goal was to save his leg."

Canon passed his physical fitness exam — for which he needed to run three miles in under 28 minutes — and stayed with the Marines as weapons trainer. He worked with wounded soldiers through hospitals and non-profits, got married and had a child, Elijah, born in 2010. And he continued with his surgeries.

Canon was "always smiling," Castillo said. But the ordeal had taken a toll on his body — weight gain, infections, constant pain. There were times, friends and family said, when his spirit and patience seemed to have frayed.

His mother suggested that he amputate his leg. So did Barbaro, who broached the subject with him after Elijah was born.

An operation last fall at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., seemed to be a turning point — Canon was optimistic that this would be the last surgery. But on Feb. 1, Canon posted a picture on Facebook of his scarred left leg, showing a red rash surging from his inner thigh, across a faded tattoo.

At the hospital, he was told he had a staph infection.

On Feb. 6, Oscar Canon posted his final message, another picture of his leg — the rash had spread past a thick line of blue marker. "The million dollar leg," he said. "It has spread past the original patch.I am at the ER on base."

Family members said he drove himself to the hospital that day, then lapsed into a coma from which he never awoke.
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