Two Colorado Marines killed when the search and rescue helicopter they were flying crashed last week were remembered in a memorial service Wednesday in Arizona.
Sgt. Charles Osgood, 27, of Lakewood, the chopper’s crew chief, and Maj. Cesar Y. Freitas, one of the two Marine pilots, were among four killed in the crash during a routine training mission near Yuma.
“I know Charlie is in a better place now. Charlie will be missed but never forgotten,” Ryan Pecknold, said of his friend Osgood, according to the Marine Corps News.
Charles Osgood, a former Lakewood resident, leaves behind an 11-month-old son and a wife who is expecting twins. “He just called me two weeks ago so excited because he was going to have twins,” said Donald Zielesch, a family friend.
He did one tour of duty in Iraq before the Marine Corps assigned Charles Osgood to the search-and-rescue unit in Arizona. “I remember him talking about the enemy shooting at him from trees,” as his helicopter hung in the sky, his mother, Leslie Osgood said in a phone interview.
When he was assigned to Yuma friends believed he was finally safe.
“We were all relieved that he had come home safely, which adds to the grief,” said Martin Jacobsen, pastor at Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Denver.
Jose Lopez-Trujillo, 21, a friend who knew Charles Osgood from Centeral Presbyterian in Denver, where both worshipped, said he was quick with a smile. “His character was unmatched, very vibrant, very humble.”
Jackie Kendall-Gebel, director of children’s ministries at the church, remembered Osgood as a warm-hearted and idealistic youngster. As a child, she said, he “sometimes brought his stuffed toys with him under his sports jacket to church.”
Osgood’s father, John, a retired Public Service Company of Colorado meter reader, tried to talk him out of joining the Marines, Leslie Osgood said. He delayed enlisting because of his father’s concerns, but eventually decided to follow his dream.
When Osgood told her he was joining the Marines, Kendall-Gebel asked him if he really wanted to make such a dangerous career move.
“He told me he had seen these commercials with the helicopter and the guy hanging out of it and rescuing people, and he said: “Jackie, I really want to do this. This is something I can do to make a difference.”
Osgood and his younger brother, Tom, a member of the Air Force serving at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan, were lifetime members of Central Presbyterian where their father is an elder.
As a teen, Charles Osgood was interested in aviation, said Allen Sheldon, an elder at the church.
“I was in the Air Force in World War II, and he was interested in the B-17,” Sheldon recalled. “He quizzed me on what it was like to work on airplanes.”
After graduating from high school, he attended Colorado Aero Tech, where he studied airplane mechanics. He then moved to Phoenix and worked as a mechanic at a flight school, his mother said.
Freitas was a gregarious soul who loved people and couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone he knew, his wife, Jennifer Freitas told The Denver Post on Monday.
Freitas served time in Iraq, but most recently he was training and flying rescue missions at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz.
The Huey rescue aircraft was flying alone on a routine training mission near the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground, a military reservation along the Arizona-California border.
The crash is under investigation.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
