Funeral For South Bay Marine Open to Public

A memorial service has been planned in San Jose for a U.S. Marine from Milpitas who was killed in Afghanistan last week.

The service will be for Staff Sgt. Stephen Dunning, 31, who died on Oct. 27 while attempting to disarm a bomb, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

The service, which is open to the public, will be held at noon on Nov. 12 at the Jubilee Christian Center, located at 105 Nortech Parkway.

Dunning was an explosive ordnance disposal technician serving in Afghanistan as part of combat operations in the Helmand Province.

He was assigned to the 9th Engineer Support Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force based out of Okinawa, Japan.

His unit was sent to Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom. Dunning, a 1998 graduate of Milpitas High School, was featured in a July 2010 Vanity Fair photo essay about the War in Afghanistan that juxtaposed images of locals and soldiers in the town of Marja, a Taliban stronghold. In the photo, he displayed part of a system -- comprised of an Xbox controller, a pair of sunglasses fitted with a video display and a bomb-disposal robot -- that allows Marines to remotely disarm or explode improvised explosive devices.

Dunning joined the Marine Corps in April 1999. Memorial donations may be made in memory of Dunning to the Wounded Explosive Ordnance Disposal Warrior Foundation at www.woundedeodwarrior.org.