That Friday morning in November, when Donna Gilmore heard the news reports that a U.S. Army helicopter had been shot down in Iraq, her heart ached to think what the families of the dead soldiers would be going through. As she waited inside her Stafford, Va., church, ready to leave for an out-of-town conference, she and her minister decided to pray.
"We prayed for the families," Gilmore said, "not knowing it was my own family I was praying for."
Daughter Dawnita, left, mother Donna and son C.J. Gilmore gather around what was Cornell Gilmore's recliner in the loft of the family's home. Donna saw to it that her children returned to school soon after his death. "They have their lives to live, and I have mine, whatever this new life is going to be," she said.
(Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)
|
|
That was the beginning, Day One.
In a few hours, Gilmore would learn that her husband of 21 years and the father of her two college-age children had been aboard the Black Hawk UH-60 helicopter that crashed Nov. 7 in Tikrit, killing all six aboard. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Cornell W. Gilmore, 45, had been in Iraq just five days, for what amounted to a routine inspection tour. He was supposed to be gone a week.
More than 16 months after President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over, Gilmore and others are still dying there. Before that declaration, about 140 U.S. troops had died; since, more than 800 have fallen. Publicly, these deaths have prompted a bitter national divide. Privately, they have triggered a much more lasting pain.
The funerals have filled the news -- often young soldiers in the military a short time. Cornell Gilmore was different. He and his family had lived the military life for more than 20 years, and they knew, as his wife said, that "anyone in uniform is in jeopardy." He had fought on the front lines in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But his family members had believed that in this conflict he was well-removed from danger, and now they are trying to reconcile their deep loyalty to the military with their sorrow over his death.
For this family and others, the experience is a struggle through time. Day One is one of the worst days, when the anguish is fresh and scalding. But there are many more bad days to come, a round of birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and ordinary times that will never be the same again, that stretch far beyond the funeral services and the surge of public attention.
Donna Gilmore, 43, and her children, Dawnita, 20, and Cornell II, or C.J., 18, have been navigating this altered life for almost 10 months. A close family who had lived on bases from Kansas to Germany to Hawaii, they are learning, as the days and months pass, to go on without their father and husband, their "team leader."
"I have had moments when I've been here by myself that have just been horrible, and you just cry out to God," Donna Gilmore said.
But "C.J. said something to me early on. He said, 'Mom, we're never going to get over this -- we just have to get on with life.' "
A Man of Big Smiles
Cornell "Gil" Gilmore, a tall, broad-shouldered man, would enter a room with a big smile and one of his signature lines, delivered with exclamation points. "Greetings, everyone! How are you?"
He had other phrases he liked to use, so closely identified with him that they were included on the back cover of his funeral program: "Come on, team!" "I got you covered." And his exit line, "Go forth -- and have a nice day."
He was known for his optimism, his love of baseball and gospel music, and his cookie habit. He believed in "life lessons" and being punctual. He went out every Friday night on a scheduled date with his wife, getting dressed up and enduring his children's taunts. He was tight with a dollar and loved his collection of cheap clunker cars, especially "The Blue Bomb," an old Chevrolet he took C.J. out in for father-son talks.
The youngest of 12 children who grew up in Baltimore, he had become the highest-ranking enlisted man and the highest-ranking African American in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps. But he had vowed that when he retired in a few years, he was going to be a Wal-Mart greeter.
