ROYAL OAK, Mich. (WXYZ) — Walking into Royal Oak’s Veterans War Memorial, Mary Manoukian was carrying sunflowers.
"He signed every card, ‘Your son Nick, love your son Nick.’ And to me, the sunflowers also resembles the son, so 'sonflowers,'" she said.
Manoukian is talking about her only son Nicholas.
She described him as bright and cheerful, just like sunflowers.
"He gave great hugs and he played the drums and he was creative," Mary Manoukian said. "There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him, that I don’t wonder what he would be doing now."
Mary Manoukian said in high school, Nick planned to pursue art, then 9/11 happened his sophomore year.
Nick Manoukian's empathy created a fire. He said it was his calling to go into the Marine Corps. And so, that's what he did after graduating from Royal Oak Kimball High School.
"He told me ‘Mom, someday I’m going to tell my kids and grandkids that I served to protect them so that the war stayed over there and didn’t come here.'"
A brave man, Nick Manoukian was deployed to Iraq in March of 2005. It would be during a deployment in October of 2006 that he would encounter roadside bombs, ambushes, firefights and ultimately, an improvised explosive device that took his life.
The city of Royal Oak wasn't aware of Nick Manoukian's story until they saw a Facebook post honoring him this year, 17 years later.
It was posted by Nick Manoukian's high school friend and prom date, LaKeesha Morrison.
"I added him onto the Royal Oak page and just stated that he passed away very young at 22," Morrison said. "It just snowballed from there. The city of Royal Oak reached out and said, 'How come we don’t know about this?'"
Once the city learned of Nick Manoukian's legacy, they created a bench at the veterans memorial in October immortalizing him.
Mary Manoukian said the bench gives her a sense of peace. She hopes that maybe one day when she's sitting on it with sunflowers, someone will walk up to her and ask, "Who's Nick?"
Referring to all the names written at the veteran's memorial, including her son's, Mary Manoukian said, "There’s a story behind every name."
