LAKE STEVENS — The last phone call between Dustin Canham, 21, and his 19-year-old bride was hushed, hurried.
It was Easter Sunday, 2 a.m. — eight hours before Devyn Canham expected her cell phone to ring with a call from Djibouti, a tiny country sandwiched between Somalia and Eritrea on the east African coast. That’s where the Lake Stevens man was deployed with the Marine Forces Reserves.
“You’re sleeping, I’ll call back later,” Dustin said. Then the phone clicked off.
Devyn, married just five months, was in a movie theater that evening when her phone rang again.
“There are two Marines here,” said Bruce Rasmussen, a friend whose address Dustin used as a contact. “They want to see you.”
As quickly as it had started, the life they were building together was over.
U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Dustin L. Canham died Sunday in what the Defense Department called “a nonhostile incident.” He was serving with a reserve unit based in Portland, Ore.
The circumstances of what happened were not announced. Devyn Canham declined to talk about what the military told her.
The Marine Corps said the incident is under investigation. Dustin Canham is the 17th military person with a connection to Snohomish or Island counties to die during the last five years of war. Three of the dead graduated from or attended Lake Stevens High School.
Dustin Canham was assigned to Marine Forces Reserve’s 6th Engineer Support Battalion, 4th Marine Logistic Group. His unit is in eastern Africa supporting military operations against terrorism and conducting humanitarian projects in the region. Friends and family said he left for Djibouti less than two weeks ago.
The Marine grew up shagging baseballs for his brother, Mitch Canham, for hours on end, Dustin’s father, Mark Canham, said.
“He hated baseball, but he’d do it every day without question, for 10 years,” Mark Canham said.
Mitch Canham, now 23, was a baseball star for Lake Stevens High School and attracted scouts when he played for Oregon State University. He was drafted this year to the San Diego Padres.
Dustin saw his brother’s success as a family victory.
“Mitch, Dust and I raised each other,” Mark Canham said. “When times were hard and their mother was gone, that’s what we did.”
The Canham boys were raised in Lake Stevens. Their half-brother, John Kendall, now 24, was with them part of the time. Their parents separated when the boys were young. Their mother died in 2003.
Dustin graduated in 2004 from Lake Stevens High School, where he was a member of the Hi-Q academic team. He often had his nose in a science fiction or fantasy book.
Dustin’s graphic arts skills were on frequent and high-profile display around campus. Each week during the season, he would design a T-shirt for the football team depicting how the Vikings were going to dismantle their next opponent. Older brother Mitch was quarterback.
Lake Stevens High School Principal Ken Collins, who coached football at the time, still keeps some of Dustin’s shirts at his home and smiles at the thought of the colorful images.
“I think I had to tell him at least once he’d need to tone it down,” Collins said with a laugh Wednesday.
Dustin’s teachers knew he was smart, but Dustin preferred being active. He took physical education classes six times in high school, then was a P.E. teacher’s assistant. Later he found joy at ForestFire Paintball in Lake Stevens, where he led teams to national paintball championships.
“A lot of his life, people were talking about my accomplishments in baseball, but the fact is that I couldn’t step on a paintball field with Dust anywhere and compete anywhere near his level,” Mitch Canham said Wednesday. “The guy was just dominant.”
Dustin managed ForestFire Paintball for five months in 2006 when owner Ezra Frenzel was away at school. If someone’s cheap paintball gun jammed during a game, Dustin was known to pass the kid his $300 gun and say, “Go have fun!” said Bruce Rasmussen, who was on Dustin’s champion paintball team.
Dustin joined the Marine Reserves about three years ago. Several relatives had served in the military, and Dustin wanted to express his own patriotism.
“He was so cheesy about it,” said his wife, Devyn Canham. “If he went to Subway, he would always get American cheese. If we went somewhere that had ‘American’ apple pie, he would order that. He loved being an American.”
Dustin was considering whether to make a career in the military. Then in April 2007, a mutual friend introduced him to Devyn.
Dustin hadn’t had many girlfriends. His standards were too high, said high school friend Jessica Bourge, 22.
The day he met Devyn, everything changed.
“He was giving me a ride that first day, and he drove past where he was supposed to stop,” Devyn said. “Then he said, ‘Can I kiss you?’ It was so cheesy, so I said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Six months later, they were married. It was a quiet ceremony, with just two friends as witnesses, in the office of a local Mormon bishop. They couldn’t find a Lutheran minister who would do the service for free, his wife said.
Dustin took an electrician’s apprenticeship to put Devyn through school at the University of Washington, where she is studying chemical engineering. They dreamed of buying a house, of having babies.
“He was so mature and made me a better person,” she said Wednesday. “I just really wanted to be someone he loved.”
They met. They married. Dustin headed off to war.
Now she is preparing for his funeral.
It was less than one year, she said.
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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