Saturday afternoon, my cousin called my cell phone. I answered. She asked me, "Do you remember Adam Howard, who we went to school with?" I said, ".....yes....why?" My heart had already fallen to my stomach. Then she said the dreaded words: "He died today. He went skydiving and his parachute didnt open." He was just 21 years old.
Of course I remembered him! We had classes together, in fact, in our senior English class, Adam, myself, my cousin and 2 other people in our class were in a group for a project we had to do. I'll never forget it. It was absolutely hilarious. We had just finished reading Macbeth (or Hamlet...ok, so I did forget certain parts), and our teacher assigned us to groups. We had to put together a skit showing the certain parts of the play, like, the certain acts. Well, our group decided to do a 'game show'. I didnt have a costume, and I didnt mind doing most of the talking, so, I was the game show host. Adam was a firefighter, Casey (my cousin) was a nun, Jessica (the other girl in our group) was a nurse, and Scott (the other boy) was a nudist on strike (in other words: he wore just regular clothes....and a hat! :) ) We borrowed buzzers from the Quiz Bowl team to use as our buzzers, Casey had made signs with everyone's names on it, kinda like they look on Jeopardy...it was really funny...we did more laughing than anything, just simply because of how we all looked, etc.
That's the only TRUE memory I have of him, for the simple reason, I KNEW him, but we werent like, the best of friends. We had classes together, the occasional "Hey"...but not anything else. And I always liked him as a person...the one thing about him that stuck out in my mind was his smile. He had that smile that just was a genuine smile, you knew he actually meant it when he smiled....
I wasnt able to go to his funeral last night because I had to work, but I DID go to the burial service today. When I arrived at the cemetary, there was a fire engine on each side of the road in the cemetary. They had the backs to each other, the ladders were out, and there was an American flag drapped over them. (Adam was a volunteer firefighter; Captain, as I later found out). When I got to the graveside, I heard bagpipes playing. I looked and there were MANY, I cant even describe how many firefighters were there, standing there, facing each other, one each side of a path, making a pathway for the casket to go through. The casket was on the fire engine Adam drove, and the pallbearers were all firefighters he worked with, one of which we graduated with. They brought the casket through, and the family followed. They placed the casket on the straps over the vault, and the family came in, sat down and we all were asked to come closer to the tent. The pastor from his church spoke, read a passage and then prayed. Then, they did the 'last call' for him. I've tried to Google it to see exactly what they say; of course everything was a blur today and I dont remember it. But it was something along the lines of "Attention: this is the last call for Captain Adam Howard." After that, everyone lost it...I dont mean like, sniffling, I mean like out loud bawling. It was so sad. His casket was draped with an American flag, and that was presented to his mother.
I remembered reading at the end of his obituary in the paper a Bible verse, and it is my favourite Bible verse. They read it out loud today at the service, and then I found out it was his favourite verse as well. John 15:13- Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
They put that on the vault, along with his name, and a photo of the engine he drove, and the firefighter's symbol. They also put a picture of the engine on one end of the casket and the firefighter's symbol on the other. His uniform was laid out in front of the family.
Remember this family in your prayers.
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