by Rinker Buck
To Hutchison, this fastidious stewardship of the Childers CACO seemed natural, just a marine “taking care of his own.” Perhaps he was merely displaying in a public role the tasteful attention to detail that also marked his private life—the beige-tone walls of his thoughtfully decorated house, the neat shelves of books, the love of people expressed by curiosity about their lives. But everyone noticed and, by now, the performance of the marine supervising the burial detail seemed as remarkable as the life of the one who had become the first killed in Iraq. Semper Fidelis. Hutchison took this motto so seriously.
“There was no question in my mind that throughout this Childers funeral we would make sure the family knew we would do anything for them, that we would be there for them,” Laura Richardson said later. “But it was Kevin Hutchison’s dedication that stood out. He was so sensitive and hard working. I walked away from the experience really impressed with the United States Marines.”
At noon, a convoy of passenger vans dispatched by the funeral home pulled up to the Childers place, their tires pinging on the fresh gravel. The immediate family and the West Virginia relatives filed out of the house or from their cars parked up on the hill, and they all made the ten-minute ride into Powell together. They were somber but calm in the vans. The decision to have an open casket had not been shared with everyone, so they didn’t know what to expect.
When Joe and Judy arrived at the funeral home, Hutchison was pleased that he had prepared Judy for how Shane looked. Biting his lip again and trying to remain composed, he waited with the Childerses in the vestibule of the funeral home for a few moments.
The tension was palpable. Through the wide double doors of the viewing chapel, everyone could see the open casket up front, with Shane’s dress blue tunic and medals shining under the overhead lights. Shane was there, right there now, after the long wait for him to return home. The crowd of family members behind Joe and Judy were anxious for them to go in alone to be with their son. They all wanted to break this terrible, expectant feeling of being able to see Shane, and then to be able to approach the casket themselves.
Finally, Hutchison escorted Joe and Judy inside the viewing chapel and then up to the casket. Joe and Judy were very quiet for a moment or two, with Judy looking stunned as she stared down at Shane, and then they both began to cry and to hold each other. They were trying to make the best of this last, uncomfortable sight of their son and stood there crying and holding each other for a couple of more minutes, reluctant to leave. But then Joe lifted his head briskly and decisively, almost as if he’d been signaled to break away, and stepped back with Judy.
When they returned to the main reception area, Judy sat on the couch, and Joe knelt on the floor in front of her, burying his face in her lap and crying uncontrollably. A few times he tried to stop crying, but he couldn’t. He was laboring manfully to be good for Judy, to comfort her too, but it was just hard, unbearably hard finally seeing Shane, encountering all at once the love that he had for this standout son. Finally he just gave in to the grief. Even after he stopped crying, Joe remained on his knees in front of Judy, just talking to her, explaining how he felt and sharing her thoughts, too.
After they had calmed down a little, Judy was grateful for the way that Hutchison had prepared her to see Shane. She was ready for the worst, and that’s pretty much what she saw.
“Kevin Hutchison was right,” Judy said while still in the reception area of the funeral home. “That wasn’t really my son in there, and he did look very dehydrated. But I think that this was the right thing to do for everyone.”
For the next forty-five minutes, while the rest of the extended Childers family stepped forward to see Shane, Joe and Judy spoke quietly with their relatives in the reception area, thanked the marines who had traveled to Wyoming from Quantico, and greeted a few people from town who had arrived in the early afternoon to pay their respects. And there were small things to notice, too, just briefly looking through the doorway separating the viewing chapel and the reception area. When Richard Brown approached the casket, for example, he stood at attention and saluted his brother-in-law Shane, as he had always promised he would the next time he saw him. He’d come all the way up from Texas, delayed his embarkation for Kuwait, just to do that.
Jessi and Jonna Walker had gone through a personal hell all week, ever since they learned of Shane’s death. Judy had called West Virginia shortly after 10 P.M. the Friday night they were informed of Shane’s death while they were still in Texas. She had asked Shane’s aunt, Mary Bias, to call all the Childerses in Salt Rock. But Jessi and Jonna’s mother had not told them until the next morning. Jessi was particularly upset because she had been awakened the night before with an unusual dream about someone being killed in a bathtub, and had then turned on CNN to watch some news to lull herself back to sleep. The crawlers at the bottom of the television screen reported that two marines had already been killed in Iraq, but she comforted herself with the thought that statistically the chances of one of them being Shane was very low. When her mother called her house in Columbus, Ohio, early Saturday morning and said, “Jess, it’s Shane,” she immediately considered that dream a premonition. She spent the rest of the morning writhing on the floor of her bedroom, devastated, crying and screaming, unable to be comforted by her husband and son.
Jonna had learned about Shane’s death directly from her mother, who drove over to her farmhouse in southern Ohio on Saturday morning, shortly after she had talked to Jessi.
“Jonna, it’s Shane,” her mother said. “Judy called Mary and told her to inform the family that Shane was the first soldier killed in Iraq. But I think it’s a mistake. It has to be a mistake. Shane wouldn’t get killed.”
Jonna didn’t want to believe it either, but her first reaction was to take out the American flag that she kept in her hall closet for patriotic holidays, and then place it in its holder on the front porch. Then she and her mother drove over to Wilton Childers’ farm along Smith Creek Hollow in Salt Rock, where they knew the family would be gathering. They stopped at a Kroger’s supermarket on the way to purchase fried chicken and soda, and by the time they got to Salt Rock the Childers farm was filling up with relatives, and the media was calling for interviews, which appeared to confirm the news. But news is funny that way, Jonna learned. She still didn’t believe it until she heard Shane’s name on a National Public Radio broadcast that afternoon. By then her grandfather’s farmhouse in Salt Rock was swirling with relatives, stunned by the loss of the star of the family, and Jonna had tired of trying to comfort her grandparents, or discovering things to say to her uncles and aunts. Her relationship to Shane had always felt individual, just between them, even beyond what she and Jessi and Shane had all together. And it was certainly beyond the niceties shared with the West Virginia relatives. She just needed some time alone to cope with that.
So, walking out through the backyard, Jonna climbed the cobble behind her grandfather’s house, with its carpet of wet, velveteen moss slippery underfoot with spring runoff. Then she reached the beech grove halfway up the slope and started to cry. She sat on a log and leaned against the base of the older-growth beech, the Shane Tree, with its marker of him above her head. SHANE CHILDERS 8/8/86. Jesus, Shane. How could this happen? This was the place where we were together as teenagers. I remember the day you carved your name. And your Citadel years. God, we did so much growing together then. You helped Jess and me so much. Oh God, Shane. Everyone down at the farmhouse is so upset. Shane, couldn’t you just think about maybe coming back? You could come back, Shane. You could always do everything.
It was more bitterly lonely than she thought she could endure, sitting on a wet log on a cold March day in a West Virginia forest, crying for what seemed like forever without anyone to comfort her there. Oh, and, Shane, this is the worst part. When I’ve got a problem like this? I would call you. Jesus, Shane, couldn’t you just think about maybe coming back? They’re so upset down below.
It was all just one big memory b
lur after that. Jessi came down from Columbus just to be with them. Meeting up with the family at the airport in Charleston, West Virginia, changing planes in Denver, getting into Billings and finding the rental car. God, all these mountains and badlands to drive over, and the wind blows so hard here in Wyoming. They all smiled at each other when they finally found the Childers ranch. Oh my God, this is so Joe. Shane wasn’t exaggerating. There were piles of farm machinery everywhere, swayback mules in the pasture, and in front the house men with cowboy hats were talking with each other.
At the funeral home, Jessi and Jonna crossed the reception area to enter the viewing chapel through the double doors on the east side of the building. They looked lovely together in their dark dresses, models for a Normal Rockwell portrait of two classically pretty and close West Virginia sisters, and they hesitated in the open doorway when they saw the open casket. Neither of them had expected that, they didn’t want to see Shane the way he looked now, but they also knew they probably wouldn’t accept his death without stepping forward. Jonna rested her arm on Jessi’s and slightly dipped her head to her sister. C’mon, Jess. We gotta do it.
At the casket, Jessi rested her cheek on Jonna’s shoulder and they held each other arm in arm. They were quiet for a while, whispering things to each other about Shane, and how he looked. Jessi reached out and touched Shane’s hand, which felt hard. Oh, and those dress blues, God, the dress blues. The only other time I saw him in those was at The Citadel Marine Ball, in the spring of 2000. Doing it up right in Charleston with all those fun marines. Shane had been so alive that night.
Then Jonna couldn’t hold it in any longer and she started crying loudly, almost wailing, which set Jessi off. They were two lovely and expressive sisters together, crying arm-in-arm, a part of each other really, actually Jessi and Jonna and Shane all together again, riding over the mountains in the pickup truck, doing Fort Sumter and Tommy Condon’s Irish Pub, listening all day to one of his ridiculous book reports. No, Shane, I don’t need any more of your advice on this, I’ve had enough personal growth for one day. Oh, and what are we going to do now without crazy, madcap, exhausting, brainy, marine-mode, considerate, annoying, argumentative, vulnerable, and strong cousin Shane?
And it was difficult, too, walking back through the viewing chapel, still arm-in-arm and crying, and exiting through the double doors, because they knew it was good-bye forever now, Shane. Oh, Shane. How in the hell did this happen?
Jonna had another strong reaction when she got out into the reception area and saw Captain Hutchison and the other marines. She so rarely saw men in military uniforms, but now every time she saw another marine, it provoked the same response. Sometimes she just thought it, but sometimes she softly spoke it through her tears. Oh, why couldn’t it have been one of them and not Shane? She felt guilty about this, and didn’t want to share the feeling with anyone else, and then she would see another pair of marines. Oh, why couldn’t it have been one of them and not Shane? The involuntary response lasted for the rest of her stay in Wyoming for the funeral.
Meanwhile, Jessi was going through her own private torture about Shane, because their friendship had fallen apart after he had been commissioned in the spring of 2001 and then left for Quantico and Camp Pendleton in California. There were a lot of reasons for this. Shane had dreamed that Jessi and her son would move out to California and get their own apartment near San Diego somewhere, so they could all be together and be as close as they had been while he was in Charleston. But Jessi knew that this would never work and, besides, she had reconnected with an old high school friend, Ryan Harper, and eventually decided on getting married. Ryan was on his way toward becoming a successful manufacturing engineer in Ohio, but Shane was worried that he’d pull Jessi back into the orbit of West Virginia. Probably Shane and Jessi would have pulled away from each other eventually anyway, because it was unrealistic to expect that they could forever keep alive a period as intense and fun as Shane’s Citadel years. But they did lose contact and drifted away from each other. When she finally got married, Jessi was devastated to receive a cold and impersonal card from Shane, with a check for a hundred dollars. It simply read: “Best Wishes, Love Shane.” Their relationship had chilled.
So that’s what Jessi felt all through the funeral, a lack of resolution about her relationship with Shane, and the loss of contact with him. But when Jessi and Shane had drifted apart, Shane’s relationship with Jonna had strengthened. This was difficult for Jessi and had provoked some sisterly jealousy. Jonna could call up on her computer any number of e-mails that she’d received from Shane in California, especially the ones that he’d sent just before he left for the war. Jessi’s old letters from Shane were stuck up in her attic somewhere, not as accessible or recent. So that was difficult. Jessi loved her sister dearly, and they were very sweet and supportive together. But Jonna’s relationship with Shane had strengthened as Jessi’s had waned. Jessi was reminded of this all through the funeral. The star of the family, with whom she had once been so close, had become a casualty of war. But she had not had an opportunity yet to reestablish their old bonds.
There was another frustration for Jessi on Monday. Joe and Judy had never been very social, except with a few very close friends. They didn’t want to remain at the funeral home to greet strangers all day. Once the West Virginia Childerses had viewed Shane, Joe made it clear that they were all expected back at the house for a big dinner and visit.
Jessi knew she had to follow her uncle’s wishes on the day of Shane’s wake, but she was disappointed. She’d had her meltdown for Shane, up before the casket. Now she was feeling better, relieved, in the mood for meeting everyone who had come to the wake. All these marine and ex-marine friends of Shane were now streaming into the funeral home. She couldn’t wait to talk with them, compare notes, and maybe even dish Shane a bit, to see if he had harangued all of them about personal growth, too. That was what she most enjoyed about Shane. You couldn’t help loving the guy but boy was he fun to dump on too—his intensity, his aspirations for other people, and his earnestness were so lovably ridiculous that everyone had an even better story to tell about him. Dishing with all the marines would have been fun for Jessi and delivered important closure. But, no. Joe said that she had to return to the ranch.
Reluctantly, Jessi and Jonna left in the vans with the rest of the Childerses. They would have to catch up with the marines tomorrow, after the burial service, when a big lunch was being thrown for the Childerses and all their visitors at the American Legion Hall.
Hutchison felt relaxed and began enjoying himself after Joe and Judy left and, for once, didn’t blame himself for having a selfish reaction. He considered it his obligation to remain with Shane’s body anyway, and to greet visitors as an official representative of the marines, but it was more than that. He was confident that he had done a good job handling Joe and Judy so far, and he adored them, but it had been a stressful week answering their needs and being there for them emotionally. Now he just wanted to enjoy a good wake and get to know the people of Powell a little better, and greet some of the marine buddies of Shane who were showing up.
Besides, by now he was very intellectually engaged in figuring Shane out, fascinated by this standout marine. But so far, he’d mostly heard just Joe and Judy’s stories. From Jessi and Jonna, before they left for the ranch, he’d heard about Shane’s devotion to the personal growth of others, his girlfriend issues, and his manic tourist-guide style when they visited him in Charleston. Shane’s marine friends described his frantic studying habits at his officer’s and infantry training courses at Quantico. The portrait was beginning to fill in and Hutchison was enjoying himself. Gossip, he thought, even about someone who had just died, was a useful social crutch and filled his need to decipher the many riddles of Shane’s personality.
The departure of the bulk of the Childers family generated another opportunity for some real breakthrough behavior, the sort of heroic day of personal growth that Shane had always championed in
those he knew. When Joe requested that all the Childerses return to the ranch for a meal, his son-in-law Richard Brown stayed behind to greet the people of Powell as a representative of the family. Sam Childers had already made the decision about what he would do.
“There was no way that I was ever going to leave Shane at that funeral home alone, period,” Sam later said. “Yeah, Shane and I had a lot of fights, and I had all these regrets about not being closer to him. But I wasn’t going to leave my brother unattended at the funeral home, no matter how many new people I would have to meet.”
The rest of that afternoon was a virtuoso performance by Sam. He met everyone who came into the funeral home, he shook hundreds of hands, and seemed effortlessly comfortable making conversation. When word of what was going on back at the funeral home reached the Childers ranch, a couple of the West Virginia Childerses waited until Joe was in the barn and then bolted for Powell just to watch Sam acting as the family greeter. Captain Hutchison, who had picked up immediately on how modest and shy Sam was, couldn’t help but notice too. It was another big CACO moment, Hutchison thought, an example of the compressed emotions and change that could come over people during a big military funeral. Richard Brown, who is naturally gregarious and enjoyed his role that day at the funeral home, was also stunned and pleased.