Paul R Syverson

Lake Zurich, Illinois

June 16, 2004

Teardrops go with memorials
By Jim Finley
Baytown Sun 

Published June 1, 2007
It was a Memorial Day like no other I can recall. Fate played a role.

There was, of course, the Indianapolis 500 the day before. I do love that race so. Have since I was a little kid.

As always, there was a time for remembrance.

There was also a nice family gathering late Monday afternoon. The rain was pelting down, but so what? We were together, and that’s all that mattered.

Nothing unusual there, I’ll admit. Pretty much like the Memorial Days of bygone years.

But by pure happenstance, a show on HGTV turned my day upside down. It implanted a message and a visual picture in my brain I won’t soon forget. Don’t want to, really.

I had just finished pounding out another column and thought I’d relax my mind and body by grabbing a little tube time. I entered the den and playing there in living color was the HGTV show called “My First Place,” which features Jill Cordes. Since Jill is a pretty doggone good-looking woman, I thought I’d watch what she had to say, even if my carpentry skills are what you’d correctly call nonexistent.

But this was no ordinary show. This 30 minutes was to feature a room makeover being done for a young widow and her two kids. Jackie Syverson is a widow because her husband, Army Major Paul Syverson III, died in Balad, Iraq, on June 16, 2004.

No doubt I’m tough, and athletic, and strong. I’m in the newspaper business after all.

Nonetheless, I confess before all mankind that I watched no more than five minutes of that show. With tears filling my eyes, I could take no more.

Why am I so upset? I wondered. Why have I turned into a wimp?

Then it suddenly dawned on me. I’m not crying for Major Paul. He’s Home now, a job well done, and saluting the Great General In The Sky.

No, sir, I thought, I’m weeping for Jackie and her children, Paul IV, 10, and Amy, 3. In this life, they’ll never see their husband and daddy again.

That’s why the tears popped out of my eyes like the rain outside.

I wanted to phone the Syversons on the wireless. I wanted to tell them my heart breaks for them. I wanted to tell them I’m crying for them. I wanted to tell them thank you. I just wanted to reach out — to them and others who have lost loved ones.

Because they invited us into their home, via TV, at that precise moment the Syversons represented all of our fallen heroes. They represented those from our area and across the nation who gave their lives so the rest of us can live — even be stupid, if we want — and go about our business.

Saddened, I retreated to the Bat Cave, my Real Newsman Office. I wanted to know more about Paul. As bad as I am on the Computer Box, I managed to learn he was from Lake Zurich, Ill., and was 32 when he died in battle.

It helped — at least a little — to know he was home when daughter Amy was born. He died seven weeks later.

He was two weeks shy of returning home.

I also thought about a stupid political statement made not long ago. A senator whose name I refuse to mention in a column about heroes, told a group of students to study hard or they’d end up in Iraq.

Dumb soldiers, right, senator?

Paul and thousands of others died so this clown can freely make such inane statements. That senator should be made to mop the Syversons’ floors. And the floors of all other fallen warriors.

After a tearful Memorial Day, that’s what I think.

Jim Finley is retired managing editor of The Baytown Sun.