Safford grapples with war as a Marine goes to his rest

It was no longer sound bites and statistics for the more than 200 people who turned out for services for Brandon Scott Schuck, the 21-year-old Safford Marine corporal killed by an "improvised explosive device" near Baghdad Feb. 6.

At the dusty city cemetery a detail of Marines in dress uniforms ceremoniously removed the flag from the silver casket, then folded it in spooky slow motion, passing it back and forth before presenting it to his 19-year-old wife.

Another detail, on a hill slightly above the open grave, fired three shots into the air.

The young Marines circulated silently in the graveyard after the ceremony, stowing gear but stopping to talk with Brandon's friends and the family of his wife, Megan.

An observer couldn't help but notice the older people in the crowd watching intently — and knowing what they were thinking.

But the inevitable brutal, silent finality of the end of the graveside service, when the crowd scattered slowly, was preceded by warm remembrances.

Saturday morning at the Latter-day Saints' big church on Catalina Street, family and close friends paid their last respects by the flag-draped casket in a side room. Then the crowd filed into the big chapel and into the overflow area at the rear and listened to church elders and family members talk about Schuck.

Lester Hughes, one of Megan's uncles, had a collection of his own and others' anecdotes about Brandon. He started to speak, but immediately choked up, taking nearly a minute before he was able to go on.

He choked up the crowd, too, when he told about Brandon preparing to meet his father for the first time, when he was 12.

"Brandon did push-ups all week long so he would impress his dad," Hughes said.

There were repeated references to "a hard life," but nearly always there followed a bright outcome, something that matched the grinning, handsome young man in the pictures on the table outside the chapel.

There was the time right after Brandon met Megan, and he was living in a house without a phone, so he'd "wait by the window looking for Megan to come by."

There was the time Brandon asked his high school basketball coach if he could stay with him for "a couple weeks and stayed a couple years."

And there were the stories from his boot camp classmates how he was voted their ironman — the toughest guy in their class — and how they all liked him, even though he yelled "Yes sir!" and "No sir!" in his sleep.

There was the story about how, in Iraq, he'd stand in the phone line for hours every night so he could call Megan and try to get his 1-year-old son, Gavin, to say "DaDa."

After the graveside ceremony, David Gray, Megan's father, said Brandon was "loving and caring." But he confessed that it took him awhile to see that side of Brandon.

Looking at the ground, Gray said, "I did everything I could to get between him and Megan. You always worry about someone who had a tough life, that they're going to bring your daughter down. But he exceeded anything I ever wanted in a son-in-law."

The crowd scattered. Megan, Gavin and her parents drove off in a big silver SUV. On the rear quarter panel was one of those yellow magnetic "ribbons" that said, "Keep my son safe."

● More Iraq coverage / A21

You always worry about someone who had a tough life, that they're going to bring your daughter down. But he exceeded anything I ever wanted in a son-in-law.

David Gray Brandon Schuck's father-in-law