Soldier who was killed in Afghanistan becomes ‘everyone’s son’ in Woodstown, N.J.

WOODSTOWN, N.J. — The silver hearse rolls out the main gate of Dover Air Force Base, where America’s war dead return to U.S. soil.

“He’s coming,” yells John Davis, a 73-year-old retired electrician and Vietnam veteran. He and about 20 other bikers scramble for their Harleys.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Gallery

 On June 9, hundreds of people lined the streets of Woodstown, N.J., to honor Army Spec. Richard C. Emmons III, who was killed in Afghanistan nine days earlier. Have you attended a similar event to memorialize a service member killed in Afghanistan or Iraq? Upload your photos and video of the event here.

Davis has a droopy gray mustache, a small soul patch and trifocals. He swings an artificial knee over his bike, drapes an ice pack over the nape of his neck and fires up his black motorcycle. The bikers pair off, forming a line leading away from the base. The hearse falls in behind them.

At 1:15 p.m., the convoy is heading north on Route 1 out of Delaware, toward the soldier’s home town. The guttural rumble of the Harleys, softened by the hum of highway traffic, fills the air.

Most of the bikers don’t even know the name of the soldier in the hearse.

Sixty miles away, in Woodstown, N.J., the three local employees of the John M. Glover Insurance Agency wonder why the police have posted temporary “no parking” signs on South Main Street. They check the borough of Woodstown’s Web site to see whether there are plans to trim the trees in town. Then they notice the firemen hanging a big American flag between the ladders of their two trucks.

One of the agency employees, William Seddon, calls his son, a volunteer firefighter, to ask what is happening.

“The body of a soldier is going to come down the street later in the afternoon,” his son tells him.

For the next hour, the three insurance company employees find it impossible to work, they later recall. The war in Afghanistan, abstract and easily forgotten, suddenly feels real.

Lisa Stone strides out of the insurance office and snaps a picture of the firetrucks with her cellphone. At 1:41 p.m. she texts it to her daughter, who works at a Wawa convenience store in Berlin, N.J., about 30 miles away.

“A fallen soldier will pass by my office in a few minutes,” Stone types as a caption.

Tara Crowther, who sits across from Stone, checks the Web site of Today’s Sunbeam, the local newspaper, and finds an article about the soldier.

“He was killed in Afghanistan,” she tells her co-workers. “He’s just 22 years old.”

When the motorcycles and the hearse pass through town, the three insurance company employees are standing outside their storefront with hands over their hearts. Crowther and Stone meet eyes and begin to cry. Both are thinking about the soldier’s mother.

Seddon, the office supervisor, stares straight ahead.

The turnout in Woodstown, a farming community on the way to the New Jersey shore, is light. Across the street from the insurance office, Sharlene Taylor stands in front of her flower shop. She didn’t know the soldier, who moved away from Woodstown as a 14-year-old. But Taylor, 62, has been selling flowers to his grandmother for years. Her shop is providing most of the flowers at his funeral, including an arrangement of white carnations that spells out his name: Richie.

“Things like this need to be in people’s faces so they understand what the government is signing us up for,” she says after the procession passes. “They should have let out the high school early so that the students could have been here to see it. It is just so profound. . . . This poor boy had to wake up with fear and swallow it every morning to do what he had to do.”