Note: This article was originally published on Sept. 7, 2003. We’re re-posting it now for our Colorado’s Fallen tribute.
Hayden – Just last month, people gathered at the Routt County
Fairgrounds here to watch children scamper around a dusty pen
trying to catch a greased pig or chasing after a rabbit.
A blue ribbon went to Sherri Lawton for her 41-panel quilt honoring
the country and her Army Reserve husband, Mark, who was deployed in
Iraq.
The start of August was a proud time at the annual county fair,
where Hayden residents and others from around northwestern
Colorado’s Routt County came together to celebrate their proud
agricultural heritage.
And then Aug. 29 brought news that this town of 1,640 had lost one
of its own in northern Iraq, Staff Sgt. Mark Lawton.
On Friday, several hundred of the same neighbors came back together
at the fairgrounds along with throngs of decorated military men and
women, Gov. Bill Owens, a handful of injured soldiers, Lawton’s
large extended family and anyone else who didn’t seem to be working
– this time to cry for Hayden’s and Routt County’s first casualty
of the Iraq war.
Lawton died in Suaydat, Iraq, after being stuck in a convoy that
came under attack by rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire.
Four other men in his unit were injured: one who lost a leg and
three others from Colorado who were able to go back to duty.
Lawton’s death was all most people in Hayden spoke about for the
week leading up to his funeral.
A standing-room-only group of more than 500 people gathered in the
town’s largest public building, the Exhibit Hall on the
fairgrounds, to remember Lawton.
“As we shed tears for Mark Lawton now, there are tears being shed
a world away in a country that is now free,” Command Sgt. Maj.
Roger Fadel told the audience.
As a 41-year-old and a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Lawton
told his commanders and family that it was very important for him
to be back in the Persian Gulf to help keep the younger soldiers
from harm.
For that, Owens called Lawton an exemplary citizen of Colorado and
the United States.
“Mark was one of those guys you could count on,” Owens said.
“These are Americans that have a deeper understanding of freedom
than you and I will ever have.”
On Friday, Sherri Lawton cried for much of the 3½-hour funeral and
graveside burial.
Her father, Lou Halloway, also broke down when reading a letter
Sherri had written for the town.
The letter spoke of the day her world stopped with the news of the
death of her husband of nearly five years. It spoke of how much
Mark Lawton wanted to teach his two young boys, Dustin, 4, and
Tanner, 1, to golf, hunt and fish, but how they toddled about in
the yard in the meantime because of their tender age.
“We had so many dreams and so many plans. We were so happy
together,” Halloway read before becoming so emotional he could no
longer continue.
At the gravesite, Dustin, a normally precocious boy who before his
father’s death would tell anyone who would listen that his daddy
was a “Cowboy Soldier” who was saving the nation, clung to his
grandfather and tried desperately to shield his tears from a
mournful crowd who gathered near his father’s casket in Hayden
Cemetery.
Sobs of grief filled the air as taps was played for the soldier’s
final send-off.
