Anchorage Daily News

Amanda Dodson lost her fiance, Jason Corbett, in Iraq over a year ago, and since then she has been through her share of military ceremonies. She has heard recorded versions of the national anthem and watched rounds fired in his honor. She knows the trumpet's reverie.

But Friday, gathered with 100 family members for the dedication of a monument on Fort Richardson, the violence of those ceremonial gunshots made her think of Jason's last moments, of how he was alive, walking on the earth and then with one single bullet he was gone. When it came time for taps, the sound melted her, like all that time hadn't passed, even though she knew it was one year, five months and a day.

"He had been standing up and moving traffic through, and then a split second later ..." She trailed off, looking at his name printed on her bracelet.

The 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division's dedication ceremony, to honor the 53 soldiers killed during a deployment that ended last year, took place on the lawn at Fort Rich. The morning was brisk and sunny and leaves were just starting to show on the birches. Families took seats under tents. Mothers and fathers had flown in from towns in Nebraska and New York and Texas. Widows chased children whose fathers had never seen them walking.

The Army is built on uniformity, even when it comes to loss. There's the knock at the door, two uniforms, the news, the deluge of phone calls and visits, the bodies flown home, the funerals, the ceremonies, the dedications. But once families are cut loose from all that, there's the solitary process of sorting it out, of trying to make sense of it, of wondering why a husband or daughter or son didn't come home when others did.

For that there is no protocol and, sometimes, no resolution.

Col. Michael Garrett took his spot at the podium. He remembered every lost soldier's memorial service, he told the families. He looked in the eyes of the paratroopers at those funerals and saw their resolve, their aggression, their desire to finish the mission. It was a proud day, not a sad day, he said, but then his voice broke and he paused to collect himself.

There were hundreds of people assembled on the lawn, but it was quiet except for distant thunder from a fighter jet and the soft nonsense chatter of babies. Seated on bleachers, a few soldiers hung their heads over their knees, sniffling. Lori Tinsley sat by herself at the edge of a tent. She lost her son Douglas Logan Tinsley the day after Christmas in 2006.

This was Tinsley's first trip to Alaska. She lived in South Carolina, but after her son died she moved to a cabin in the small town of Goldston, N.C. She named it Logan's Rest. She used to be in the extermination business, but these days she isn't working.

"I'm kind of crippled," she said.

Logan was her oldest son. She had raised him by herself for 18 years. He went off to Iraq with his banjo, an electric guitar and two harmonicas to work as a medic. People said he had a gift for saving people, even enemies, when it seemed they couldn't be saved. He was killed when his Humvee rolled into a ditch. Her other son, Ryan, is in Iraq right now.

"First you're laying on the floor, and then you find your knees, then after a time, you find your feet," she said. "I'm still in that process because I got another child over there. It's like I'm holding my breath."

It doesn't seem to heal.

"I miss my son," she said. "I miss my son."

Garrett helped unveil the monument, a shiny stone pyramid engraved with the names of the dead. Bells began to toll. One peal for each soldier. Hundreds of other soldiers from the brigade, those who had gone to Iraq and returned, stood in formation facing the families, their red berets in tidy lines. Soon they'll be gone, off to new posts and new missions, some out of the Army for good, their lives rolling on. Summer will blossom, and the houses on post will empty and fill again with other families. Another season of snow will turn the mountains white.

Crystal Becker, who lost her husband, Shane, last April, held her sleeping daughter, Cheyenna, on her shoulder. She had moved from Fort Richardson to Beeville, Texas. She's building a house mostly by herself on land they bought together.

The shock of his death left her disconnected, she said. It was only in the last months that she felt like she was waking up.

The first thing she did when she got to Beeville was buy a tractor to clear the land. There were plenty of things she thought she couldn't handle. The snakes. The big boulders and stumps. Now the house is framed up.

The other day she was working on the loft when she lost hold of a beam and it fell on her, bruising her thighs. She muscled it back into place and set it with a screw. The day was hot and she was sweating. She took a moment to admire her work, alone in the house she had planned to build with her husband. She felt like crying. She missed him being there to be proud of her.

Soon Friday's ceremony was over. People passed Kleenex and hugged. Becker's older daughter, Cierra, used a pencil to trace her father's name on the memorial. It was nearly noon Alaska time. That's midnight in Iraq, where other soldiers had a few more hours of sleep before waking to another day.

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley.

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