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Thursday, August 11, 2005
Warren honored on return to Duluth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They stood waiting for him under clouds heavy with pending raindrops.
In eager hands they clutched small American flags, waiting for the moment that he would go by so they could raise them in final salute. They huddled in clots, scores and scores of them, all along that stretch of Ga. 120 in Duluth that leads east to the funeral home.
He was my neighbor, some said.
He used to usher at our church, said another.
Jackson Warren, the 22-month-old son of Sgt. 1st Class Charles Warren, waits for his father’s body to arrive by police escort at a funeral home in Duluth.I served, too, said a few.
However they knew him or didn’t, they were united in their desire â€â€? and sense of duty, some said â€â€? to honor this 36-year-old husband and father of two. When Sgt. 1st Class Charles Warren left his family in Duluth nearly eight months ago to fight in Iraq, he also left behind a community that prides itself on its patriotism. In Duluth, if a hometown boy dies in a war, he gets a white cross with his name on it. On Veterans Day and Memorial Day, those crosses line either side of Buford Highway, a main drag into town.
Yet on Wednesday, one cross stood alone next to a flag lowered to half-staff just outside City Hall. It was Warren’s. For years to come, that cross will be a reminder of the Georgia National Guard member’s death by a car bomb at a checkpoint in Iraq last week.
Warren wasn’t born in Duluth, but he called it home. Because of that, the leaders of the city put out the call as soon as they heard the news: His body would return to town in just a few hours.
Mayor Shirley Lasseter sent out e-mails just before noon and had the city clerk Teresa Lynn hit the phone tree with this message: Everybody who can, line the road leading to Bill Head Funeral Home no later than 5:15 p.m. They were going to welcome Warren “back home as only Duluthians can do!”
Word went to the town merchants’ association, the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club, the Fall Festival Committee and nearly every church and Sunday school in town.
“We just wish we could have gotten to the schools, to have the kids out there,” Lynn lamented in the moments leading up to the arrival of the hearse.
Duluth Police said they would escort Warren’s body from the airport to the funeral home.
By 5:30 p.m., the edge of the parking lot at Proctor’s Square strip mall was lined with people. Down the road, the same scene unfolded at Duluth First United Methodist Church. In the parking lot at Bill Head Funeral Home, Warren’s nearly 2-year-old son, Jackson, ran in the grass near his grandmother, uncles and aunts, who were surrounded by mourners.
They waited. And waited. Drops fell intermittently from the sky. A helicopter hovered overhead.
At 6:20 p.m., bleats from sirens approached. Those at the funeral home hustled to the front of the driveway. Then came the flashing gold lights of the police escort.
Warren’s was the third vehicle to enter. Through the glass of the hearse, people could see his coffin.
It was draped with a flag. Larger, but the same as the ones his neighbors held in their hands, which covered their hearts.
