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Joline Gutierrez Krueger: Army Sgt. James Akin will hold office in our hearts

By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Wednesday, June 13, 2007

A man looks at a "James Akin for President" poster handed out to mourners at the funeral for Army Sgt. James Akin at Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque. Those who knew Akin said at the June 12 service he was sincere in his quest for the presidency. That quest was cut short when he was killed in Iraq earlier this month.

Some of the hundreds who showed up for the funeral of Army Sgt. James Akin looked perplexed when handed campaign posters proclaiming his candidacy.

"James Akin for President," the posters read in red, white and blue.

But how? Why? Akin, 23, laid to rest June 12 under a leaden sky, was gone, another New Mexico soldier killed in the increasingly febrile war in Iraq.

Some let the posters flutter in their hands, fanned themselves, held them out as if they contained a painful image they could not bear to look away from, then placed them under the seat in front of them.

But those who knew, really knew, Akin knew how much their fallen friend would have loved the posters. They knew that his quest for the presidency was real, that nearly everything in his short life was aimed at carrying him that much farther along that road to the White House. Someday.

Of course, that day never came.

Akin, assigned to the Stryker Brigade Combat Team based out of Fort Lewis, Wash., was one of four soldiers killed June 3 near Baghdad when a roadside bomb exploded close to the Humvee he was driving.

He had been days away from turning 24, days away from returning from the war in Iraq, from returning to the road to the White House.

"He would have been president," said Victor Raigoza, who met Akin in 2004 when he hired the then 20-year-old to be his campaign manager for a Democratic bid for a state Senate seat. By then, Akin had been four years into the world of the state Democratic Party.

He had been noticed.

"James was, at his young age, full of the wisdom and the knowledge of someone working in politics for many years," Raigoza said.

He meant that as a good thing.

It's so strange today to find young people so willing to hurl themselves into the body politic, which now can seem so corrupt, inept and exclusive.

Eight out of 10 teens and preteens don't want to be president, mostly because they have no interest in politics, according to an ABC News/Weekly Reader poll done earlier this year.

The rare child who says he or she wants to be president also wants to be a superhero. It's all just that naive, momentary fantasy that dissolves as the cynicism of age and reality sets in.

But Akin was different. He was already a superhero. He was ready for the next job.

Even his MySpace page address was myspace.com/akin_for_president.

"He was driven by heroes," Akin's longtime friend and debate coach, Dave Poyer, said at the June 12 service at Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque.

Among them was President Clinton, who years before had also been a kid with a big dream to run the country.

The story of Clinton's life, at least those early pristine years, became Akin's life, Poyer said.

Akin studied Clinton, he said, to learn how he had forged his own road to the White House from that place called Hope.

For Akin, Hope was the North Valley.

Among the many photographs displayed at the funeral was one of Akin shaking hands with Clinton, a poignant reminder of another photo many years before of a young Clinton with President Kennedy.

Akin had already crafted the words many might have imagined he would use some day on some political platform:

"We will either fight for our principles or they will die. We will either fight for our ideals or they will die. We will either fight for our country or we will lose it."

We lost Akin instead.

"The saddest thing was losing that potential, that promise," Raigoza said. "He would have made a great president. He would have made the great state of New Mexico proud."

He did.

What has happened to all those "Akin for President" posters now, a day after Akin's burial at the Santa Fe National Cemetery, is anyone's guess.

Mine is hanging in the newsroom, a reminder of what could have, should have been.