PARIS – Sgt. Corey A. Dan was laid to rest Saturday afternoon beneath a canopy of bare hardwood branches, amid fallen leaves and near an old stone wall on his family’s property on French Road in Norway.
A solemn crowd of about 50 watched as the uniformed U.S. Army honor guard precisely performed the ceremonial acts that signify a funeral service with full military honors.
This was a much more private moment than the funeral service held earlier in the day at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, where police estimated 3,000 turned out to pay their respects to the fallen soldier who was killed in a roadside attack March 13 in Ramadi, Iraq.
Not only did hundreds attend the funeral, more than a thousand patriots, friends and family, many bearing flags, lined the route from the school to the burial site.
The moving tribute left the soldier’s family in awe.
“To come out and see a sea of people with American flags and holding messages saying, “Thank you, Corey,’ you can’t describe how that made a family feel,” said Sharon Bouchard, Dan’s grandmother, speaking from her Paris home Saturday night.
“He (Corey) would have been so proud,” she said.
And Bouchard said the tribute continued to the grave site.
“All along the way there were people saluting, holding their hand over their heart, holding posters saying, Thank you,'” she said. “The support was there for us.”
Inside the gymnasium, the funeral was carried out with honor and reverence. White-gloved hands draped and folded flags in crisp movements.
The 22-year-old soldier touched the lives of everyone he met, the Rev. Douglas Dingley said as the service began. “And in between,” Dingley said, “he brought joy and love and goodness into the lives of all who came to know him.” Dingley, a longtime family friend, is a former Norway resident who lives in New Hampshire.
In a letter read by Dingley, Dan’s mother, Wanda Kilgore, of Norway talked about her son’s love of family and the way he used to make friends.
“If I had known that by having one child I would have accumulated many children, I would have built a house big enough for them,” she said.
She recalled a recent trip to Indiana to see Dan’s son, who was born as Dan left the United States in December for his latest tour of duty in in the Middle East.
“I went to Indiana to see my new grandbaby, and it was like holding Corey all over again at that age,” she said.
His 3-month-old son, Austin, and the baby’s mother were in attendance Saturday.
Dozens of pictures surrounded the podium from which Dingley spoke, behind Dan’s silver coffin draped with an American flag. Some showed Dan smiling broadly, an arm cast around the shoulders of a friend or loved one. In others, he was a boy playing in a wagon, or in a team uniform holding a baseball bat.
There were shots of his graduation from Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School and also a drawing with the name of the band Metallica.
Among the memorial flowers stood a large heart made from red carnations, which bore the banner, “I’ll miss you Bubba, love Tristan.”
It was the nickname he’d encouraged his young brother, who turns 10 today, to use. They shared a close relationship, and Dan had tattooed Tristan’s birth date on his arm.
He probably never knew, Dingley said, that the tattoo might one day be used to identify his body.
Maj. Gen. John “Bill” Libby, commander of the Maine National Guard, awarded Dan a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal during the service, presenting the medals to the soldier’s family along with the flags that had been used over his coffin for the processional.
Dan served with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division based in Ft. Campbell, Ky.
Gov. John Baldacci was in attendance, and approached the family briefly.
As the service concluded, there were quiet sniffles and the noise of fans hummed from the gym ceiling. The crowd, which spread across the floor and up into the bleachers, rose solemnly as Dan’s casket was led from the room by a bagpiper and drummer playing “Amazing Grace.”
A final good-bye
At the grave site, the family stood huddled together on top of a hill, behind a stone wall. More than 50 people gathered on the dirt road to lay Dan in his final resting place. His flag-draped casket sat under a tree, its branches bare as it awaited spring.
The lonely call of a bird occasionally broke the silence.
The Army chaplain read a prayer as heads bowed and a few sniffles were heard. A volley was fired into the crisp Maine air before taps was played. People lining the dirt road saluted.
The honor guard moved forward in formation to fold the Stars and Stripes on the casket. The flag was then passed to Gen. Libby with a slow, precision salute. Libby, in turn, presented it to Tristan, who clutched it to his small body.
The family asked for time alone before the casket was lowered into the ground. Silently, people filed away and a lone Army officer in fatigues squatted before the silver casket. He said a prayer, leaned over and placed a coin on top. Slowly, he got to his feet and saluted Dan one final time.
Staff Editor Mary Delamater and Staff Photographer Amber Waterman contributed to this article.
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