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Saturday, July 30, 2005
Families grieve, then must wait
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For most of the families, the bad news came Monday.
Then, the waiting started. Waiting for news about when the body of their loved one would come home from Iraq. Waiting to find out when they can hold funerals for the four Georgia Army National Guard soldiers who were killed last Sunday by a roadside bomb.
Standing in his driveway in Valdosta on Thursday morning, the grandfather of Sgt. John Frank Thomas thought about the grandson he raised and reflected on his own life.
The 83-year-old man, also named John Frank Thomas, grew up in an orphanage in Macon with almost nothing to his name. Decades later, he’s retired from the Air Force, with his home and vehicles paid off.
“I’d give everything if I could get my grandson back,” he said quietly. “He was like a son to us.”
Hours later, an official from the Army’s Casualty Assistance Center arrived to tell the family about the transport of the 33-year-old soldier’s body, and to let them know they were the beneficiaries of his life insurance policy. Again, the senior John Thomas said he wished he could trade that money for his grandson’s life.
“I know,” Sgt. 1st Class Harris Cody replied gently, setting aside the papers that the grandfather needed to sign.
The soldier’s grandmother, Manuela Thomas, wanted Cody to know about the young man she referred to as “my baby.” She showed Cody portraits of her grandson when he entered the Marines in his early 20s, a photo of him at the National Guard Armory, and one of him with his pit bull mix, Annie. She wondered if she could display one at the funeral.
Because he died in a bomb blast, she didn’t think there could be an open casket. But she wanted people to see what a handsome man he was. Cody reassured her that she could display a photo. He told the couple their grandson’s body had arrived the night before at Dover Air Force Base and should be in Valdosta on Monday evening. He promised to return and update them on arrangements.
In Covington, the family of Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller is trying to work out the details of his funeral. Late in the week, they gathered at the home of his sister, Berlinda Alexander, where he lived for several months before going to Iraq.
Fuller’s parents were reluctant to talk about their son, as if doing so might open the wound further. Berlinda had made a small shrine to her brother, moving items from his first tour in Iraq â€â€? his medals and a folded American flag in a wooden case – from the bedroom where he had stayed to the mantel in her living room.
The family is guessing that they can have the funeral late this week. “We don’t know exactly what the process is,” Berlinda said. “We’re just waiting.”
In Sylvester, friends tried to find a way to comfort Cathy Brunson, the mother of Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson.
Peggy Tompkins, who works as a secretary in the Worth County sheriff’s office, also has a son in Iraq. She was struggling with what to say to Cathy. “I can’t talk about it,” Tompkins said. “It’s too upsetting.”
Her husband, Sheriff Freddie Tompkins, went to see Cathy and simply gave her a hug. “I told her we would think about her,” he said. “Really, there’s not a lot I could say.”
Gus Brunson’s father, Jeffry, who lives in Lawrenceville, hopes he’ll get a chance to sit with his son’s casket. Just one last chance to talk to his boy.
“It won’t get any easier, I don’t think,” he said. “I’d like to say it’ll get easier next week or next month, but I don’t think it will.”
Staff writers Rosalind Bentley, Shelia M. Poole and Charles Yoo contributed to this article.
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Hometowns cope with troop deaths
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rich Addicks/AJC
Members of the Thomson High School football team, led by line coach Rodney Garvin, say a prayer for the Kinlow family Wednesday after practice. Chauncey Kinlow, 15, a defensive lineman for the team, is the son of James Kinlow. More photos
Lincolnton � A single electric candle burns in the balcony of the Lincoln County Courthouse.
At first, commission Chairman Walker Norman was unsure what to do when he learned Monday that a native son had died in the Iraq war. It had been so long since someone from this out-of-the-way town on the South Carolina border had perished in combat. The last one Norman could remember was during the Vietnam War, when he was a boy.
But the habits of civic grief are enduring. Norman asked someone to go to the courthouse attic and find one of those white candles they put out at Christmas. Then he ordered the flags lowered to half-staff and called a funeral director to see about engraving a 29th name on the memorial out front: Sgt. James O. Kinlow.
Although Kinlow was 35 and the father of two, Norman and almost everyone else around here knew him as “Chester’s boy,” the son of longtime courthouse custodian Alchester Kinlow.
“The war in the Middle East,” The Lincoln Journal began its front-page story, “has come home.”
The deaths of Kinlow and three other Georgia Army National Guard soldiers last Sunday have indeed brought home the war in Iraq as nothing before. Four communities across the state are simultaneously dealing with the loss.
The men were killed during a patrol in Baghdad when their Humvee was destroyed by a roadside bomb. They became the first combat deaths among the 2,500 Georgians who were deployed to Iraq in May as part of the Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Georgia toll at 45
While last Sunday was the deadliest day of the war for Georgia, the human cost of the conflict has registered across the state from the beginning.
Since fighting began more than two years ago, 45 Georgians have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to the independent Web site icasualties.org, which tracks coalition deaths in the war. Georgia’s war dead have come from 34 hometowns in every part of the state, from Mineral Bluff in the Blue Ridge Mountains to Blackshear near the Okefenokee Swamp. Twelve have come from metro Atlanta.
One town touched by the latest carnage had already suffered a war fatality. Thomson, where Kinlow moved from nearby Lincolnton seven years ago, mourned its first death in 2003.
The other victims of last Sunday’s blast came from three different parts of the state.
Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller, 44, lived in Covington, where he worked most recently as a warehouse supervisor. Family members gathered at his sister’s house to share memories and honor the man and the soldier.
Sgt. John Frank Thomas, 33, a former Marine, was raised in Valdosta by his grandparents. After the Army informed them of his death, a black and purple ribbon marked their mailbox.
Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson, 30, grew up in Sylvester, in the peanut country of southwest Georgia. The town rallied around his mother, Deputy Tax Commissioner Cathy Brunson. The Chamber of Commerce posted a memorial sign, and two black ribbons were affixed to doorknobs outside the tax office.
Kinlow was driving the Humvee that carried them all last Sunday. The reactions to his death in his hometown and in his adopted town have revealed something about the continuing shock and growing familiarity of this war.
In Thomson, most of the grieving has centered on Kinlow’s home, where he lived with his wife, Daphanie, and their two children, 15-year-old Chauncey and 10-year-old Chelsea. Chauncey’s high school football teammates said prayers for the family after practices, and his mother’s co-workers at the county Board of Education brought an ample supply of food. But outside the circle of family and friends, the mood of the town has been as subdued as Thursday’s moment of silence at the Rotary lunch.
Thomson’s emotions were more obvious two years ago when Army Command Sgt. Maj. Jerry L. Wilson, a native son, was killed during an ambush in Iraq.
“People were depressed for weeks,” remembered DeWayne Patrick, a retired three-star general who spoke at the funeral, which drew an overflow crowd of 500 to Springfield Baptist Church. “Everyone here knew Jerry and his family.”
Patrick, who returned to his native Thomson after he left the Army, had lunch with Wilson during a leave not long before he was killed. The general warned him to vary his routines in Iraq to thwart would-be ambushers.
Mayor Robert Knox Jr. agreed that Kinlow’s death felt different. “We don’t know James Kinlow like we knew Jerry Wilson. This death brought those traumatic memories back.”
The city is developing a memorial park to be named for Wilson. The mayor said he would like to commemorate Kinlow there, too.
Twenty-five miles north, Lincolnton is taking Kinlow’s death as personally as Thomson took Wilson’s.
“You see this happen on TV, but it’s always some other person and some other place,” said the Rev. Dennis Joe Quinn, pastor of First Baptist Church. “It’s never this close to home. We’re awfully hurt.”
Lincolnton, population 1,566, is one-fourth the size of Thomson but feels even smaller. Located on the banks of Clark Hill Lake, it’s best known for outdoor recreation and for the championship football teams of the Lincoln County High School Red Devils. Kinlow grew up here, finished school here, married and began a family here. Everyone seems to know his family, if only because of his father’s job at the courthouse.
“This is Mayberry,” said Lincoln Journal news editor Jacquelyn Johnson. “Everyone knows everyone.”
After news of Kinlow’s death spread early in the week, expressions of sympathy started appearing across town. The flags in front of the courthouse, library and City Hall were all lowered to half-staff. Tribute signs went up in front of the Huddle House restaurant and the Farm Bureau Insurance office, where the message struck notes of condolence and resolve. One side of the sign read, “Our Prayers Go Out to the Kinlow Family.” The other said, “Thanks to All Our Soldiers. Remember: Freedom Isn’t Free.”
There would have been another tribute, but no one has been able to kindle the eternal flame at the war memorial in front of the courthouse. It was last lit after the space shuttle disaster in 1986.
“We tried to light it the other day,” said commission chairman Norman. “We could hear some gas coming out, but we couldn’t get it going.”
The final tribute will come early this week at First Baptist, where Kinlow and his parents were members. Pastor Quinn knew the soldier well, not only as the son of one of his deacons, but as a spirited opponent in pickup basketball games.
“I’m pretty tall, and he couldn’t drive on me,” Quinn recalled, with a smile, “so he started backing away and knocking down those long-range shots.”
Twelve years ago, the minister conducted Kinlow’s wedding service. Now he’ll be leading his funeral.
Daphanie Kinlow wanted her husband to be buried in Savannah Valley Memorial Gardens, on the highway he drove so often between Lincolnton and Thomson. It’s the same cemetery where Jerry Wilson, the area’s first fatality, rests under the soil of home.
Staff writers Rosalind Bentley, Shelia M. Poole in Covington, Anna Varela in Valdosta and Charles Yoo in Sylvester contributed to this article.
Soldier uses music to chase Baghdad blues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Spc. Edward Middleton strums Green Day’s “Good Riddance” on a friend’s guitar in the searing afternoon heat Saturday in Baghdad.
Camp Striker, Iraq - Not too many folks would find it appealing to sit outside under a searing Baghdad sun to strum a few notes on the guitar. Much less find it relaxing.
But Spc. Edward Middleton doesn’t mind the debilitating heat. “This weather doesn’t bother me one bit,” he said.
Besides, he said, it’s a great way get a tan.
Middleton, 22, of Macon, began playing guitar five years ago when he was in high school. He and several of his buddies had an Alvarez acoustic guitar shipped to Baghdad ahead of the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s deployment to Iraq. They share it to play a few songs after long, grueling days patrolling the uncertain streets of the Iraqi capital.
“I like all sorts of music - rap, oldies, rock,” said Middleton, on his second tour of Iraq. He was here in 2003, with a unit attached to the 3rd Infantry Division. “One thing I was never keen on though was classical. Really couldn’t get into it.”
His favorite piece to play is a Christian song called “Breathe” that he learned a long time ago.
While most other off-duty soldiers were hibernating in their air-conditioned tents Saturday afternoon, Middleton decided to wait outside on a friend to go play volleyball later.
Just a soldier, a folding chair and a few peaceful chords to take away the Baghdad blues.
So does he ever think of entertaining his tent buddies?
Middleton laughed. “Well, I try not to,” he said, “because they tend to show me up.”
