Many NPR listeners heard Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson’s February 19 story about the time she spent with U.S. Marines from India Company and the resulting death of Marine Alejandro Yazzie, of Rock Point, Arizona.
U.S. Marine and Afghan army commanders confer after their men begin taking fire while on patrol earlier this week. Image by: Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson/NPR
On the March 4 Morning Edition, Nelson gave a behind the scenes account of putting the story together to NPR’s Renee Montagne
Nelson’s behind-the-scenes story shares the challenges and intimacy when covering intense stories in close quarters with the subjects:
“I was in a room with maybe 20 or 25 Marines. It was freezing. I mean, it was basically a petrol station that had been – the glass had been blown out from the various IEDs that they had detonated. I was in this room, and you have to picture it’s just a concrete floor, rat feces everywhere, and all of us were so cold.”
Reporting on the reaction to her story, Nelson exchanged shared:
“And so what struck me about him, unlike the others, he was a little quieter, he was a little shyer, but very sincere, very nice, and just – I could tell when he would just mention that he wanted to talk to his wife, his eyes would just light up in a way that I knew he was very much in love with her. And I know he was trying to call her on Valentine’s Day on my phone and couldn’t reach her and he had planned to call her that night again. But he definitely was thinking about her and their unborn child.”
Montange, in her closing, said,
“Soraya’s story, with sound of the firefight in which Lance Corporal Yazzie was killed, upset his family, but his wife Colandra(ph) also told NPR she was glad he was interviewed before he died, because now she knows his last thoughts were of her.”
Arizona Public Radio reported Yazzie’s funeral on March 2.
The story had impact in many ways, the way good stories do….and should.
