A soldier’s funeral

02/16/2007

Hi folks. I have included a link to some footage from a local news outlet in NE Iowa.

http://www.mwnews.net/html/video_shannon_funeral.html

It is from the funeral of a young man, 22 years old, from my hometown who was killed in Iraq recently. Guttenberg, Iowa is a city of about 2500 people right on the Mississippi River along US 52. I never knew Cpl. Shannon but I am told he was a class president, star athlete, etc. His mom and dad run the pharmacy in town. My mom lives directly across the street from the church and spent the day watching out her window, sobbing as she watched Cpl. Shannon's brothers and sisters being comforted by their military escorts, probably much as his buddies comforted him. My mom was remembering her 20 year old brother killed in Vietnam in 1968 just weeks before coming home. She has told me it seemed to make so little sense then, but that it makes even less sense now.

It makes me think to how profoundly these deaths change the courses of our lives. My uncle was the only son, and would have come home to run the family farm, possibly in partnership with my father. I was almost a farm kid! My best friend from kindergarten through high school lived on the farm that I would have grown up on. I probably never know him without my uncle dying. Do I end up running the farm with my brother, instead of going to college and law school and eventually becoming a union organizer? What happens to the people I touch through my work, if I am on the farm in NE Iowa.

I am sorry for my ramblings. Just say a prayer for Cpl. Shannon and his family and my mom and add one for peace. And if like my mother you are tired of it all, do something today, anything to stop it. Even just the prayer.

I am personally tired of it, too. I don't want my mom to have to go through that even one more time.

http://www.mwnews.net/html/video_shannon_funeral.html

Russell Hess
440 5th St. SW
Plainview, MN 55964