Marine sends ice statue home for Christmas

A warm-hearted Marine stationed Afghanistan couldn't come home for Christmas or his sister's birthday - so he stunned his family by sending them a towering ice block carved in his likeness instead. The 7-foot-tall statue of 1st Lt. Neil Bucken holding an actual red rose arrived late on Wednesday at his relatives' Staten Island home, a day before his 11-year-old sister's birthday, and in the nick of time for Christmas. "Half the family was all bawling their eyes out," said his mother, Donna McBrien, a physician who lives in Hawaii, but who returned to her native Staten Island for the holidays. "It was just amazing. It was very touching."

Bucken, 27, has been stationed in Afghanistan for nine months after joining the Marines more than two years ago, something his mom said he had always wanted to do. The Xavier HS and University of Hawaii graduate has been home on leave only once so far. He's been gone so long that his beloved sister, Sullivan has grown four inches taller since he left.



While trying to figure out how to have a presence at home for Sullivan's birthday, as well as for Christmas, Bucken shifted from his initial idea of sending a statue to having an ice sculpture made. The finishing touch was having a photo of him and his sister, both smiling in Honolulu, incased in the base of the giant sculpture. "I was telling him that all I wanted for my birthday and Christmas was him, so he was thinking how to make that possible," Sullivan said. "It's so sweet."

The statue shows Bucken in his dress blues, with medals and stripes visible in fine detail. It weighs more than 800 pounds. While it would normally retail for about $1,000, Vincent Nuzzolese, owner of the Nuzzolese Brothers Ice Corp. in Hicksville, LI, said he waived all charges as soon as he heard the story behind the unusual request. Unless it rains, his frozen body double is expected to last out in his grandmother's back yard in Livingston well into the New Year.