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Dad: My son showed courage right to the very end

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John and Diane Foley talk to reporters about their son's heroism and compassion in front of their home on Wednesday. (Lebanon Voice/Harrison Thorp photo)

ROCHESTER - Under a pale blue sky speckled with clouds, amid the whirring and clicking of cameras and surrounded by scores of reporters and photographers, John and Diane Foley told the world of their son James on Wednesday and how proud they were of him, even as his final moments on earth played out to an incredibly savage end.

James Foley, 40, was murdered by members of ISIS, or the Islamic State, who released a video of his beheading late Tuesday. Federal officials are trying to determine where and when it took place. The video has, however, been verified.

“This (execution) was horrific,” John Foley said Wednesday afternoon outside his Rochester home off Old Dover Road, where he, his wife and son, Michael, stood before a phalanx of media from all over the world who had come to hear them speak.

“I mean this haunts me and how could they have this form of execution,” John Foley continued. “And the way Jim just took it … it’s a testament to his courage. I’m sure he volunteered to be first.”

Diane Foley, at times overwrought and looking down at the ground, called her son’s actions amid the Syrian war zone prior to his capture “almost Christ-like.”

James Foley

“He could go into a village, and not speaking any Arabic, be joking and swapping cigarettes and laughing within 30 minutes,” she said. “Wherever he saw suffering he had to help.”

“We thought he had nine lives,” she said almost with a quick grin. “I mean after being kidnapped in Libya.”

James Foley’s brother, Michael, said family was always important to his brother.

“His final words were that he wished he could be with family,” Michael Foley said. “Family was important to him.”

James Foley grew up in Wolfeboro, graduating from Kingswood Regional High School in 1992. His family later moved to Rochester and call the city their home.

They are parishioners of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, where the Rev. Paul Gousse spoke of the sadness the entire church was feeling on Wednesday.

“We are all trying to deal with this tragedy that transpired, and the Foleys are part of our family,” Father Gousse said. “We’re trying to work through this and heal as a parish family.”

While family and friends strive desperately to heal and remember the legacy of James Foley, Intelligence and National Security officials are trying to figure out the components of ISIS.

The executioner in the video appears to be of British descent, speaking with an English accent as he condemns American airstrikes on ISIS positions in Iraq.

 

James Foley in the war zone prior to his capture in 2012.

British officials are now saying hundreds of British Nationals have joined the fight in Iraq, aligning themselves with ISIS.

James Foley was originally captured by Syrian rebels in November 2012 and he had been in captivity ever since in various undisclosed locations, often beaten and tortured. He was also kidnapped for a month and a half during the Iraq conflict several years ago, but escaped that confinement unscathed.

Authorities now believe ISIS, considered even more brutal than al Qaida, may have acquired James Foley in recent months as they have several other Western journalists, either by buying them from other groups or just stealing them.

It is reported that ISIS sent an email to GlobalPost, for whom James Foley worked as a reporter, and his parents as recently as last week that was full of anti-American rhetoric and condemnations of the American bombing in Iraq.

Previous emails had demanded ransoms of more than $100 million.

It also was released late Wednesday that an American military mission this summer to free James Foley and several other Western journalists failed when the rescuers and the journalists were unable to meet as had been arranged.

John and Diane Foley decried the ISIS terrorists as incredibly barbaric and cruel.

“How do you fight such meanness and hatred,” John Foley said. “Jimmy could not back away when he saw it and do nothing.”

As the press conference neared its close, Diane Foley thanked the journalists and urged them to not let her son die in vain.  

She said her son believed in frontline journalism and wasn’t afraid to put himself in harm’s way to help ease suffering. She said he would not only take videos himself, but would teach locals how to take videos on their own cellphones. She wondered aloud who would now fill the void he leaves behind.

”Jimmy loved our country,” she said proudly. “He stepped up to stop the suffering going on in Syria, the way it’s now going on in Iraq.”

“Jimmy did his work,” his dad echoed. “Now it’s up to others to pick up the ball.”

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