Sadly, Cpl. Dmitriy Nicholaevich “Dima” Tanner, age 22, of Mechanicsville, died September 28, 2013 in California. Born August 31, 1991 in Ekimovichi, Russia, he was a 2009 graduate of Chopticon High School. He enlisted in the Marines at age 17 and had combat training at Camp Geiger in North Carolina.
Both he and his wife, Cherie Marie Smith, were stationed in Camp Pendleton in California.
His awards included the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Medal, and the Meritorious Mast Award. He also modeled part-time for Calvin Klein, Versace, and Givenchy.
In addition to his many talents, he was also an artist, and had a definite flair for languages. I was the first ESOL (English-as-a-Second Language) instructor for Dima (and his brother, James) when the boys arrived in St. Mary’s County and Dima enrolled at Margaret Brent Middle School more than 10 years ago. Dima was a quick study and made such good progress with his new language that he soon progressed out of the ESOL program. I approached the challenge of teaching English to Dima by asking him to teach me Russian. Every day, we added to our list, hand-written by both of us in turn on a yellow legal-sized pad of paper with two columns running down the pages – one for the Russian words, and the other for the English translations. We referred to this list often during the first few months of Dima’s English classes but the list was eventually abandoned as we moved on to other instructional materials and Dima advanced in all of his studies.
He and James, and their parents, James R. “Ray” and Michaela Tanner, were guests at my home at the annual party I gave for my high school ESOL students and the SMCPS ESOL teachers. And whatever became of the worn yellow pages of the Davis-Tanner English-Russian “dictionary”? I have it to this day – packed away with treasured ESOL materials, even though I’ve been retired now for over four years. And how did I do with the Russian language? Let me just say that Dima, you were a much, much better student of English than I was of Russian. You will be missed.
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