The roosters cock-a-doodle- doo as the day closes on the prairie subdivision, painting the distant Front Range a swirl of orange and grape sherbet. Kyle Nickell, 9, wearing padded football pants and a gray Strasburg Indians shirt, runs around the nearly 3-acre yard kicking a soccer ball with a buddy.
A few months ago his soccer partner might have been his dad. But Jeff Nickell, 40, a full-time employee of the National Guard stationed at Buckley Air Force Base, went to Texas with the Guard in March, and then in August he was shipped to Iraq. He’ll serve there for about a year, coming home for two weeks at some point.
Otherwise, father and son won’t boot a ball together until Jeff returns for good.
As his dad’s departure grew closer, Kyle says he kept thinking, “Wow. Now we don’t get to go fishing or seeing elk together. Or go to Elitch’s together.”
He added: “He showed us how to fold the American flag. He went to Cub Scouts camp.”
Kyle says his dad’s service “makes me feel special.”
“We get to write letters to him, and he writes back,” he says at the family’s home in Strasburg. “We send him care packages.”
This year, Kyle’s Cub Scouts pack raised about $1,600 for the troops, going door to door selling popcorn.
“We had a garage sale and were wondering what to do with the money,” says pack leader Tammy Bruntz, 41. “The topic of Kyle’s dad going to Iraq came up.” That idea sparked the popcorn-selling brainstorm.
Life changed dramatically this year for Jeff and Kyle, as well as Cole Nickell, 3, and mom Penny Nickell, 36, who now must run the house largely by herself.
The family moved here from Thornton four years ago.
“We wanted to get out of the city and into a smaller school district,” Penny says.
So they went east about 40 miles to this former farm town, where affordable subdivisions with large yards increasingly sprout where cattle once grazed, and wheat and corn waved in the breeze.
Penny struggles to keep it all together, and she misses her husband. “Being at home all the time makes it harder. It’s very quiet and dark out here at night.”
– Douglas J. Brown
