Note: This article was originally published on April 11, 2003. We’re re-posting it now for our tribute to Colorado’s Fallen.
While many Iraqis embraced freedom half a world away, three Colorado families said solemn goodbyes Thursday to military men – husbands, fathers, sons – lost in the war that made it possible.
Relatives of Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas J. Slocum fashioned farewell messages with felt-tipped markers on the casket of the 22-year-old,
killed March 23 in fighting near Nasiriyah, after his funeral in Northglenn.
So many things left unsaid – now buried with him in Fort Logan National Cemetery.
At a Longmont church, memories carried the day. The body of Army Sgt. 1st Class Randy Rehn remains overseas while the military
determines if he died from an enemy assault or “friendly fire.”
So family and friends clung to episodes of irrepressible humor that marked the life of Rehn, 36, killed April 3 in a battle near
Baghdad’s international airport. They told tales of pranks and practical jokes, stories that will bear repeating when Rehn’s
7-month-old daughter, Megan, grows old enough to understand her loss.
Beneath leaden skies in Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery, grieving parents and a wounded, wheelchair-bound comrade watched a
flag-draped casket, drawn by horses, carry Army Capt. Russell B. Rippetoe to his rest.
Rippetoe, 27, who was raised in Broomfield and Arvada, died last Friday at a checkpoint in western Iraq, where he and two other
soldiers approached a car that carried suicide bombers, one of them a pregnant woman. He became the first casualty of the war to be
buried alongside 25,000 other soldiers at Arlington.
For families and friends of the fallen men, Thursday mingled pride and patriotism with the incalculable price of suffering and loss.
At the close of one memorial, Chad Slocum leaned over his cousin’s casket and spoke, saying how much he loved Tom, how much he would miss him.
“He was supposed to come back so we could party,” Chad said, his head wrapped in an American flag bandana. “He came back but not
the way he’s supposed to be.”
