Posted on 05/27/2006 6:50:12 PM PDT by kristinn
Memorial Day will be different this year at the Vacaville-Elmira Cemetery, where Casey Sheehan, a soldier from Vacaville, lies buried.
Until this week, more than two years after his death in Iraq, Casey's grave has been marked only by a small plaque. On Thursday, it received a headstone.
The elegant marble slab is thick and emblazoned with a cross and delicate thickets of trees on both sides.
"Our Casey," reads an inscription on the front. "Ever faithful, kind, and gentle, good son, beloved brother, brave soldier, dear friend, you loved your family and lived your life serving others to the end." Six icons grace the other side, representing a military insignia, the theater, Eagle Scouts, Van Halen, the World Wrestling Federation and Superman.
Also on the front are Casey's name and the dates of his life and death, which reveal an uncanny synchronicity. In addition to Memorial Day, Monday will also be Casey's birthday, the day on which he would have turned 27.
The installation of the headstone on Casey's grave is likely to get more notice than the vast majority of such installations. Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, has become a well-known anti-war activist since Casey's death, frequently in the spotlight in front of a highly divided crowd.
The absence of a headstone on Casey's grave became fodder for Sheehan's critics last year, who accused her of being negligent and disrespectful. Sheehan did not publicly respond for the first several months of such charges. But on April 10, she wrote a blog entry excoriating her critics and recounting the torturous experience of burying her son.
"I didn't want to put a tombstone on my son's grave," she wrote, capitalizing the letters of the word "tomb." "I didn't want one more marble proof that my son was dead."
For the first year after Casey died, wrote Sheehan in the entry, she referred to the place he was buried not as a cemetery, but as "Casey's Park." During that time she visited the cemetery nearly every day, she wrote, placing fresh flowers weekly on Casey's grave.
Sheehan also said that her estranged husband Patrick had taken on the responsibility of handling Casey's gravesite.
On Friday, Sheehan answered questions about the headstone via e-mail from Australia, where she has spent the week speaking out against the country's support of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.
Sheehan said she had paid for the tombstone herself and was part of a family effort to put it up, even though its installation saddened her.
"It is important for the rest of Casey's family to have one," she wrote Friday. "I guess the pain of seeing it etched in marble that he is dead is another pain I will have to deal with."
That pain, said Sheehan, stems from her belief that Casey should still be alive.
"I still feel he was killed for lies," she wrote.
The headstone was very expensive, Sheehan wrote. She said that the government should have paid for it because of its responsibility for his death. But Sheehan said money is not the main issue.
"It's about the lies that are still killing our children and innocent Iraqis," she wrote. "It's about unnecessary tombstones all over the world because of the Bush regime."
The new headstone on Casey's grave won't impact her relationship with her son, concluded Sheehan.
"Casey's shell lies in the grave in Vacaville," she wrote. "He is with me always and in the hearts of people all over the world who know his story and are working for peace."
Patrick Sheehan did not return phone calls by press time Friday.
I'm sure the news hounds will be there to bring us this groundbreaking story, live.
The headstone was very expensive, Sheehan wrote. She said that the government should have paid for it because of its responsibility for his death. But Sheehan said money is not the main issue.
The militry DOES offer a headstone, she apparently didn't want it....
She had fancy birkenstock bills and trips to Venezuela to kiss Hugo Chavez to pay for first. Casey's headstone could wait.
With all the hoopla and media circus, will someone please make sure Casey gets his flag for Memorial Day?
Or don't they mark every soldier's grave anymore?
I'd really love to know from some of Casey's friends what his relationship with his mother was really like...
Shell? She sounds like one of those wacky, Heaven's Gaters.
I was going to say something, but words fail me about this woman.
I respect Casey and thank him for his courage, service and sacrifice.
His mother,....don't get me started.
Huh? Isn't this supposed to be an adult's grave?
her time is up, maybe the article should have focused on Casey and not the traitor?
She will have a fit with the military insignia on it.
Casey's father arranged it.
I'll bet she didn't pay a dime toward it, made her ex-husband foot the whole bill. Of course, she'll take all the credit, and the media will never bother to report the facts.
It is an adult's grave it's just that his mother despite her age is not an adult.
I grieve with the family at the loss of a faithful and heroic son and know that the anguish it has caused has certainly impact6ed and effected all...but her reeasoning for all the delay indicates that it is all, once again, about her
Sad, pathetic wretch.
Good point.
If Casey Sheehan is looking down on this I'm sure that he resents him mother. I sure would.
Apparently it is just another piece of evidence pointing to the mother's disturbed mental state.
I suspect she's more comfortable remembering a child who liked Superman than an adult man who categorically rejected her anti-American values.
Please see Cindy Sheehan Watch for all the latest (almost)!
Thank you for that. I was just going to bring up that point. As you so well know, LCPL Karl R. Linn is with outstanding company; Audie Murphy's (and so many other's) headstone is the same, very dignified, it speaks volumes. We thank God for LCPL Linn's service, sacrifice and example.
No cheap politician will EVER match the quality of our soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen--EVER. Quite a few (cheap politicians) have disgraced themselves for all time.
I find that gravestone more eloquent and touching than any one with carved Van Halen-theatre-superman-Wrestling symbols.
I don't care how much Van Halen meant to the guy, would you want to go into eternity with such insipid, temporal fluff on your grave?
I do find it interesting the symbols the family chose. The theatre? How appropriate. Where is the circus icon?
Once again it's all about her.
Thanks. I agree about the elegance of the old marble markers. There's nothing wrong with tradition. Karl is right next to my Dad (Navy WWII), who has the same stone. I wish I had earned the right to have one like it.
I cannot imagine putting stuff like she did on Casey's headstone. I mean, I can see putting an inscription on Karl's like "He liked to blow s@#t up" or something like that, because he'd have appreciated the humor. (He was a Combat Engineer.)
Too bad the rest of us have to be part of her strange and bizarre drama.
G-D bless you and comfort you and thanks to Karl for his service and sacrifice.
Please forgive my ignorance, but what does the wheel symbolize? Is that a Buddhist symbol?
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God bless you, sir, and may your hero son rest in peace.
lol
I guess I could have, though in a National Cemetery, it probably would have been as welcome as a fart in church. Actually, I don't believe anyone ever asked us what to put on there. It just happened. I understand that we could have asked that it be redone. The weird thing is that someone saw photos from the funeral day and from the first Memorial Day and pointed out that the headstone had changed. Turns out that someone somehow had a stone ready for the day of the funeral but it spelled out his middle name and didn't list his Purple Heart. I'll have to see if anyone knows the story when I go up there Monday. I bet it was some local initiative done as a gesture of respect, just like they put him next to my Dad at the end of the row.
I'm so glad Casey's father divorced Cindy's sorry ass. Imagine waking up to that kisser every morning. I'd rather wake up next to the King from Burger King.
Yes, that is the Buddhist 8-spoke wheel. It symbolizes the "eightfold path", which is akin to the 10 Commandments. My wife and I are Buddhist, but we let the boys figure out their own way. They've been to Catholic Church and Episcopal gradeschool. Karl mentioned in one of his later postings somewhere that he considered himself a Buddhist, though he listed nothing on his dog tags.
More about Cindy Sheehan...
What is most interesting to me is that the press gives this little bunch of people who are protesting with Cindy so much air time without discussing Cindy's background. This is a case of more press bias. It has been pointed out on just a couple of media outlets that Cindy divorced her first husband and left her son with him to be raised while she became a political activist for the Democratic Party. She had very little to do with her son in his growing years. She remarried. The 1st husband remarried. The original father raised the son with his new wife. They miss their son and mourn the loss of his life. They have stated that they are very proud of their son and that they agree with the stance of America in Iraq and on terror. They said that their son was eager to serve and to go fight the terrorists in Iraq.
He volunteered. How many news stations carried their interview? Not many. So the son dies in Iraq and then Cindy shows up to make a stink. She gets an audience with Bush. That was not enough. She goes to Crawford and demands another audience. How many news stations carry the ongoing saga of Cindy?
Practically all of them. Cindy didn't care about her son. She let another woman raise him. Cindy doesn't care about the other soldiers in Iraq. Cindy cares about her liberal, feminist agenda and about using the death of her son to lobby against Republicans and Bush. And the press is helping her. Why?
Then 2 days ago, Cindy's 2nd husband filed for a divorce from Cindy. Cindy sounds like a feminist opportunist who did not have the sense of responsibility to even raise her own son. It looks like her 2nd husband is fed up with Cindy. We middle Americans should be fed up with Cindy also. We should be fed up with the press. They manipulate us into their "group think" and into the responses that they want on their polls.
45 posted on 09/07/2005 4:36:21 PM PDT by Smartass http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1479328/posts
Seems to me that her blog entry regarding Casey's headstone was on Kos.
God Bless You and your family.
Your son was a hero. I thank God for him and all others who are willing to sacrifice everything for this great country. Thank you Karl for your service.
What an honorable man you raised. How very proud you must be of your son. God Bless you. May God give you strength, courage, peace, and joy. Joy at all the wonderful memories you have of your precious son.
Thank you Sir, for sharing your son. Thank you Karl, for your valor--you are NOT forgotten and you did not die in vain. We are free today because of heroes like you.
(eyes watering)
Have you looked at Snopes on that??
I would not care if the sign on my grave read "City Dump" when I meet Jesus.
No, haven't checked with Snopes, which I've found is regrettably not to be relied upon regarding political or Biblical matters.
I do trust www.TruthorFiction.com, but found nothing on this topic there.
Most places do, a very few do not.
I plan to make a visit to the Central Texas State Veteran's cemetery near Ft. Hood on Monday. It's been open less than a year, and already too many are buried there. However many of those, like the particular one I'll be visiting, are veterans of earlier wars. In this case a Marine veteran of the Vietnam era, who later changed over to the Army and beame an MP. He died a couple of months ago of cancer, living about 2 years longer than the 6 months the doctors gave him when he was first diagnosed. Had a decent, if not great, quality of life until the last month or two, and then after a bad period, went quickly over a weekend.
There are some however who perished in our current conflict.
I can only thank that soldier for his sacrifice. Weak as that may be.
Dittos to that. God won't care about material things, and neither will I.
Thank you all for the kind words and your support. It means a lot to me that there are still many of you out here "in the trenches" doing what you can to keep the world from going completely insane. Some days I just don't have the strength to keep up. But I still care. I go to funerals with the Patriot Guard Riders and help out at http://www.marineparents.com.
In the last 16 months, I've come in contact with quite a number of "Gold Star" families. Every one was in support of their son and only one or two even vaguely expressed doubts about the current mission. I know any number of Moms who would take Cindy's head off in a heartbeat for doing what she's doing.
I continue to be impressed by the caliber of our troops who are serving these days. My son is but one small example. If you're interested, check http://www.legacy.com/Soldiers.asp?Page=FSStory&PersonID=3098411 and explore the links on the lower right under "Related content:" I am especially indebted to RightFielder (who I met on this site) for putting together the tribute to Karl on his blog site.
Semper Fidelis
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