BY JOEL REESE
Daily Herald Staff Writer

Marcus Nellsen's arduous path to the Palatine Brown's Chicken & Pasta led him all over the world - from Chicago to Tennessee to China to Guam.

"One time he called me collect at 3 o'clock in the morning from Guam," said his sister, Mary Nunez. "I was so mad. … I was like, 'Guam? Where the heck is Guam?'"

Nellsen came to Brown's after serving as a cook in the Navy for nine years. He walked into the restaurant just a few months before he was killed there on the night of Jan. 8, 1993.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NELLSEN FAMILY Marcus Nellsen as a toddler, a grade-schooler and a U.S. Navy enlistee, where he was a cook.

For the 31-year-old Nellsen, the job at Brown's was more than a paycheck. It was a big step in his effort to get his life back on track.

Nellsen had battled alcoholism for years, and he and his wife Beverly divorced in 1988, largely because of his drinking.

But Brown's presented a chance for Nellsen to get everything together, to finally get it right. Owners Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt adored the affable Nellsen and had quickly put him on the management track - he was scheduled to attend a management training seminar on Jan. 9.

"He was really looking forward to going there," said former Brown's co-worker Casey Sander. "I could tell he'd been through some rough times, but he was really getting his act together."

The second of five brothers and sisters, Nellsen spent his adolescence moving between his hometown of Chicago and Tennessee. His family relocated to Tennessee because of his stepfather's declining health, but Nellsen spent his early years on Chicago's North Side.

The city was a never-ending source of adventure for Nellsen and his younger brother Paul: "We'd always be running around the neighborhood, going by Wrigley Field, playing at the park, stuff like that," Paul said.

Fueled by those escapades, Nellsen dreamed of serving in the military and traveling across the world.

"For years he talked about the Navy," Nellsen's mother, Diane Clayton, said. "I had a brother who was in the Navy, and Marcus really looked up to him."

Nellsen enrolled in ROTC in high school, then entered the Navy when he was 17. Being in the military allowed him to indulge in two of his greatest loves: cooking and travel.

Nellsen earned several medals during his naval stint, including the Humanitarian Service Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal.

Nevertheless, his stay wasn't trouble free: Alcoholism ran in his family - Nellsen's biological father was an alcoholic - and he was disciplined on different occasions for alcohol-related incidents. He spent more than a month in a Navy alcohol rehab center in 1982.

"My brother liked to have fun - that was the problem," Paul said. "When he was in port after weeks on a ship, he liked to party. He became an alcoholic in the Navy."

His fortune changed when he spotted Beverly Goff across a Navy cafeteria in 1983. The gregarious, always-determined Nellsen immediately asked her out, but Goff, who also was in the Navy, rebuffed him.

"I just didn't want to date anyone," Goff said recently from her home in downstate Robinson. "But he was very persistent. And he was very sweet - a gentleman."

She finally relented and the two went out for dinner. They dated for a whirlwind two months, then Nellsen proposed.

They were married Nov. 9, 1983, at the Stardust Motel in San Diego. Nellsen was 23, Goff was 20.

The couple rented an apartment in Ocean Beach, Calif., and 3¨ years after their wedding, Goff gave birth to daughter Jessica.

Meanwhile, Nellsen was working his way up the Navy's culinary ladder. He began cooking for the enlisted men, then for the chiefs and the captains. Unfortunately, his cooking skills didn't always translate outside the Navy.

"His food was either undercooked or burnt - he was used to cooking for 500, not for two or three," Goff recalled with a laugh. "He admitted it was bad, and I would say, 'No, no, it's OK.'"

But Navy travels took him away from his new family, and temptations followed. The allure of places like the Philippines pulled at the strings of their marriage.

So a little more than four years after they were married, Nellsen and Goff divorced. He left the Navy in 1988 with an honorable discharge and headed east to Tennessee to be with relatives. Unable to find a job, he moved to Chicago.

This was a difficult time for Nellsen. He lived with both Paul and Mary for a while, then in a succession of YMCAs, including the Leaning Tower YMCA in Niles and the Lincoln-Belmont YMCA in Chicago.

He went from job to job, including work at a food flavoring plant on Chicago's North Side, then at a Chicago NutraSweet ice cream factory.

Despite his precarious financial situation, Nellsen was sending as much money as he could back to Goff and young Jessica - more than mandated by the divorce agreement.

"He'd eat Happy Meals and cans of tuna to make sure his daughter had more money than what he gave through child support," Paul recalled. "Most men, they run from that kind of responsibility. Mark embraced it."

Nellsen also was in constant contact with Goff, trying to reconcile their shattered marriage.

"That was all he talked about, his ex-wife and little girl," Clayton said. "Me and my daughter could be talking, and he'd interrupt with something about his ex-wife and daughter. He was very, very unhappy after they split up."

The NutraSweet plant eventually moved to Florida, leaving Nellsen without a job. The change, combined with other factors - his divorce, his inability to find steady work and his departure from the Navy - took a toll on Nellsen's psyche. Depression set in, and in 1992 he checked into Forest Hospital in Des Plaines to fight it and put alcohol behind him for good.

"He wanted to get his head back to where it belonged," Paul said.

Paul remains certain Marcus didn't need such intensive treatment, but he thinks his brother wanted to convince Goff alcohol was gone forever.

Nellsen took the lessons he learned at Forest seriously, Paul said. "He went to a 12-step house almost religiously for about a year," he said.

Nellsen gained the upper hand on alcoholism and also became a devoted Christian, writing Bible verses on index cards.

"He was working toward a better Mark, you might say - and he was getting there," Paul said.

While attending a support group, Nellsen met Joy McClain. The two became friends, then McClain mentioned that she needed a roommate in her house in Palatine.

"I told him, 'Why don't you come and live out here? I'd feel safe, and it would help with expenses,'" McClain said.

Nellsen moved in with McClain in 1992 and began working as a cook at an Arlington Heights retirement home. But that job required Nellsen, who did not own a car, to walk several blocks to catch a train, then walk several more blocks from his stop.

So one day, he headed a few blocks over from home to Brown's Chicken & Pasta. His previous culinary work and affable demeanor impressed the Ehlenfeldts, and they hired him as a cook.

Meanwhile, Goff and Jessica had moved to Robinson to be closer to Nellsen. Goff had reservations about living in a big city, but she says now she would have relocated to Palatine if things had worked out: "It seemed safe enough," she said.

Nellsen worked his way up to de facto assistant manager and was on his way to officially becoming part of management at Brown's.

"He was in charge when the Ehlenfeldts weren't around," co-worker Sander said. "He was going to be taking classes. We used to tease him all the time about going to Brown's Chicken University."

Despite the teasing, Sander said, all the workers liked the jovial Nellsen.

"You got the impression Mark had been through a lot in the past and now he was excited because things were looking better for him," Sander said.

Nellsen was buried after a military funeral and his mother still proudly displays the U.S. flag she received afterward.

"My son still lives in my heart, and he will forever," Clayton said, wiping tears from her eyes. "They can't kill his memory."