Maine town mourns 2d soldier

[unhappycamper]

Maine town mourns 2d soldier
By Sarah Schweitzer
Globe Staff / December 8, 2007

Once again, the residents of Lee gathered yesterday as they had just five months ago, hands clasped in front of them, women dabbing eyes, and men staring stolidly ahead. About 450 residents - just about half the town - filled wooden bleachers and rows of fold-out chairs in the Lee Academy gymnasium to pay their respects to the village's second fallen son this year, killed, like the first, by a roadside bomb in Iraq on his second tour of duty.

"We are a small town," said Joan Scrivner, 78, of Lee, a retired school lunch cook. "And to lose two of our boys - well, it just seemed like it couldn't be possible."

And yet they sat yesterday staring at the flag-draped coffin of Army Sergeant Blair W. Emery, 24, killed Nov. 30 in Baqubah, as the sobs of a widow and the click of the honor guard's heels echoed in the gymnasium. It was the same spot they had mourned Army Sergeant Joel A. House, 22, who died June 23.

Their lives had been intertwined from an early age in this northern Maine village where livelihoods are hard-earned in the woods and nearby paper mills. Their fathers were loggers together, and House's father had graduated from high school with Emery's mother, Quie. The two had been teammates as boys, playing soccer and baseball in junior high and soccer at Lee Academy.

Both men chose the military after high school, having wrestled with their plans for the future.


Rest of article at: http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2007/12/08/maine_town_mourns_2d_soldier/

[democrank]

1. Another day, another heartbreaking death.

Rest in peace, Sgt. Emery.