thedrifter
05-25-07, 06:42 PM
Parents of one local Marine slain in Iraq will have much to say on Memorial Day
Thursday, May 24, 2007
By KEVIN PARKS
Record Staff Writer
If it takes a village to help raise a child, then a village may also help mourn the loss of a child.
Grove City has done both for Cathy and Jim Bernholtz, and that's something they want people to know. It's one of the points they decided to make when invited by Mayor Cheryl L. Grossman to be the speakers for the local Memorial Day observance. (See related story for complete schedule of events for Monday, May 28.)
To many people, perhaps most, Memorial Day simply represents a long weekend at the outset of summer, according to Grossman.
Not to families like the Bernholtzes, who every day feel the presence of an absence, and that's also something Jim and Cathy want to say when they get up to speak Monday morning.
The Bernholtzes were surprised when son Eric J. Bernholtz announced he was enlisting in the Marines.
They were shocked and their hearts were broken when two Marines on their doorstep imparted the worst news parents can ever hear, the kind that begins with "I'm sorry to inform you ... "
Eric had been killed in Iraq, along with 13 fellow Marines, by a roadside bomb on Aug. 3, 2005. Those 14, all members of the seemingly luckless Columbus-based Lima Company, had their names added that day to the list of American soldiers killed in Iraq, the numbers that keep climbing in the newspapers.
But they're not numbers, and that's something a mother who knows wants to tell people on Memorial Day.
"Behind every fallen service person is a family who grieves their loss forever," Cathy Bernholtz said.
And the grieving does go on and on, put in her husband, comparing it to a phantom pain.
"It's kind of like when you lose an arm," Jim Bernholtz said. "The wound heals."
"Your body adapts," Cathy said.
""But you remember the way you used to reach out before, but now you can't reach out, and everything is changed forever," Jim finished for them both.
Something else the grieving parents want Memorial Day ceremony participants to know is that the current war is different from most others in the past. Unlike World War II, the Korean War and the War in Vietnam, every soldier in the current conflict in Iraq volunteered, Cathy Bernholtz said. Most believe strongly in the mission, even if growing doubts are being voiced back home, Jim said.
"Eric truly believed in what they were doing there," he said. "They are eradicating evil in that country.
"Our media presents a very narrow view, the sensational, things people want to read."
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Jim and Cathy Bernholtz want the people of Grove City to know that they have been genuinely touched and comforted by the outpouring of sympathy they have received in the wake of Eric's death.
"Grove City has just done a great job in portraying the patriotism that Americans feel," Cathy Bernholtz said.
She remembers the hundreds of local residents walking down Grove City Road toward the cemetery last Memorial Day.
She'd have liked to have gotten a snapshot of that, to send to all the soldiers in Iraq so they could derive some of the comfort she felt from the sheer numbers of people who showed up on what so many see as just a holiday.
The Bernholtzes had actually moved away from Grove City after Eric left for basic training. They settled in a suburb of Denver, but came back following his death.
It wasn't only to be close to son Adam and his family, the couple said, but also to be back within the comforting arms of Grove City.
"This is where our support is," Jim Bernholtz said.
He and his wife just want people to know that.
Ellie
Thursday, May 24, 2007
By KEVIN PARKS
Record Staff Writer
If it takes a village to help raise a child, then a village may also help mourn the loss of a child.
Grove City has done both for Cathy and Jim Bernholtz, and that's something they want people to know. It's one of the points they decided to make when invited by Mayor Cheryl L. Grossman to be the speakers for the local Memorial Day observance. (See related story for complete schedule of events for Monday, May 28.)
To many people, perhaps most, Memorial Day simply represents a long weekend at the outset of summer, according to Grossman.
Not to families like the Bernholtzes, who every day feel the presence of an absence, and that's also something Jim and Cathy want to say when they get up to speak Monday morning.
The Bernholtzes were surprised when son Eric J. Bernholtz announced he was enlisting in the Marines.
They were shocked and their hearts were broken when two Marines on their doorstep imparted the worst news parents can ever hear, the kind that begins with "I'm sorry to inform you ... "
Eric had been killed in Iraq, along with 13 fellow Marines, by a roadside bomb on Aug. 3, 2005. Those 14, all members of the seemingly luckless Columbus-based Lima Company, had their names added that day to the list of American soldiers killed in Iraq, the numbers that keep climbing in the newspapers.
But they're not numbers, and that's something a mother who knows wants to tell people on Memorial Day.
"Behind every fallen service person is a family who grieves their loss forever," Cathy Bernholtz said.
And the grieving does go on and on, put in her husband, comparing it to a phantom pain.
"It's kind of like when you lose an arm," Jim Bernholtz said. "The wound heals."
"Your body adapts," Cathy said.
""But you remember the way you used to reach out before, but now you can't reach out, and everything is changed forever," Jim finished for them both.
Something else the grieving parents want Memorial Day ceremony participants to know is that the current war is different from most others in the past. Unlike World War II, the Korean War and the War in Vietnam, every soldier in the current conflict in Iraq volunteered, Cathy Bernholtz said. Most believe strongly in the mission, even if growing doubts are being voiced back home, Jim said.
"Eric truly believed in what they were doing there," he said. "They are eradicating evil in that country.
"Our media presents a very narrow view, the sensational, things people want to read."
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Jim and Cathy Bernholtz want the people of Grove City to know that they have been genuinely touched and comforted by the outpouring of sympathy they have received in the wake of Eric's death.
"Grove City has just done a great job in portraying the patriotism that Americans feel," Cathy Bernholtz said.
She remembers the hundreds of local residents walking down Grove City Road toward the cemetery last Memorial Day.
She'd have liked to have gotten a snapshot of that, to send to all the soldiers in Iraq so they could derive some of the comfort she felt from the sheer numbers of people who showed up on what so many see as just a holiday.
The Bernholtzes had actually moved away from Grove City after Eric left for basic training. They settled in a suburb of Denver, but came back following his death.
It wasn't only to be close to son Adam and his family, the couple said, but also to be back within the comforting arms of Grove City.
"This is where our support is," Jim Bernholtz said.
He and his wife just want people to know that.
Ellie