Sunday, 08/28/05

Communities send message to Kansas church group as servicemen remembered

By NATALIA MIELCZAREK
and KATE HOWARD
Staff Writers

Most of those who came didn't know the two fallen soldiers personally. Some came for their own loved ones fighting in Iraq. Others heard about a religious group from Kansas who had announced plans to protest at the funerals.

Regardless of what brought them, the hundreds who showed up yesterday along the route to the services for Sgt. Gary L. Reese Jr. of Ashland City and Staff Sgt. Asbury "Fred" Hawn II of Lebanon said they came in solidarity with the families. Both men served with the 278th Regimental Combat Team and were killed in Iraq last week.

Nora Farmer Creighton is the mother of a soldier, and she watched the Reese funeral procession pass in Ashland City.

"That mother and father are burying their baby boy. They don't need this," said Creighton, referring to protesters from a Kansas church who preach that casualties in Iraq are God's way of punishing America for being dominated by homosexuals.

"The God that we believe in is a God of love, and we don't need people like this coming down here. … They're coming to Tennessee because they would have done buried them in Topeka, Kansas."

Crowds lined the streets to Ashland City's National Guard Armory and in Smyrna, waving American flags and chanting "God bless the troops." Supporters outnumbered the dozen members of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., tenfold at each funeral.

The Kansans, including children and teenagers, came to promote their beliefs that U.S. soldiers are killed because they defend a country that supports homosexuality. Holding signs proclaiming that "God blew up the troops," the demonstrators were cordoned off by yellow tape near the funeral sites and were watched closely by local law enforcement. Both groups left before the funerals were over.

Supporters held signs such as "God loves the troops," sang patriotic songs and counterprotested.

Led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, the Kansas church preaches that God hates America because the country has been taken over by gays, a sin that God punishes by killing troops. Yesterday's funerals were not the first where the protesters have appeared.

"They're fighting for a fag country," said Libby Phelps, 22, a granddaughter of Fred Phelps who protested in Smyrna. "There's nothing heroic or prideful about that. ... God put us here to preach the word."

But amid the cacophony of yelling, sirens and honking of cars passing by, family members and friends of Reese and Hawn, who grew up in Smyrna, didn't lose sight of why they came.

Sam Waldron attended Reese's funeral in a dual role: as an Ashland City firefighter and a high school friend.

"He was kind of a prankster, but always in a good way," Waldron said of Reese. "He could make a bad situation better."

Waldron said he and Reese worked at a local grocery store together while in high school and became good friends. They graduated from Cheatham County High in 2001.

"There were certain customers who would come every week. He'd mess with them and hide their carts, as a joke. That's just the way he was."

Meanwhile, 50 miles away in Smyrna, supporters of Hawn lined the street near Smyrna First United Methodist Church. A group of veterans from a local motorcycle club stood at attention under the extended ladders of two Smyrna Fire Department engines.

The ladders supported a large American flag that the burial procession passed under. Many drivers nodded a silent thank you to the hundreds who stood saluting Hawn with their hands on their hearts.

The Rev. Steve Marcum of La Vergne Free Will Baptist Church eulogized Hawn as a brave soldier who was also a devoted husband and father of two.

"He was not just willing to go (to Iraq)," he said. "He was willing to die. He represented America well."

Story Copyright to Tennessean.Com