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| Photo by Eric Wright, December 8, 2017. |
One year ago yesterday, Eric and I were honored to be on the same flight from Atlanta, GA to Kansas City, MO as the remains of a WWII soldier who was killed in the Gilbert Islands in1943. With a cold Southern rain on the verge of turning into the snow that would later shut the airport down, we watched silently and prayerfully from the window of the plane as Marine Corps Reserve Pfc. Sam J. Kourkos boarded in his flag-draped casket, flanked by salutes. My thoughts on that flight were of our grandmother who had passed away the month before and whose memorial service we were traveling to attend, and of this soldier who died so long ago and was on his way to be reunited with family, seventy-four years late. This was a homecoming for Pfc. Kourkos. A homecoming that would end for him at the airport in MO, where family and media waited. When our plane landed, he disembarked ahead of us into the brilliant Kansas City sunshine, while we, spellbound, watched from the windows until the flight attendants had to ask us to please disembark the plane ourselves so they could allow the connecting passengers to board.
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