3
Marine Second Lieutenant James J. Cathey
Brighton, Colorado, and Reno, Nevada
ON A BLUE SKY Labor Day weekend in a new upscale residential neighborhood, a middle-aged man mowed his yard as a silver SUV ambled down the street past manicured lawns and half-finished homes. In a place filled with soccer moms and SUVs, the Suburban with government plates didn’t stick out. The two men inside did. Daylight notifications can be tricky. The sight of men in formal uniforms can set off alarms in every military family in the neighborhood. At night the truck can slip through the streets like a scythe.
Minutes before, as they temporarily parked outside the neighborhood, the two men bowed their heads.
Major Beck and Navy chaplain Jim Chapman closed their eyes in prayer as the chaplain asked for ”words that will bring the family peace."
At the time, Major Beck didn’t know what those words would be. He never does.
Two Marines are required for each death notification, not just for emotional support but for each other’s protection. While most parents eventually grow close to their casualty assistance calls officer, the initial meeting tests all emotions. Major Beck likens it to the first exposure a baby chick has when it opens its eyes. That connection, that bond, he says, will never break.
At the beginning of the war in Iraq, one of the Marines from the major’s unit was slapped by a furious mother. In 2004 a distraught father in Florida set fire to a van that carried the Marines sent to notify him.
When the knock came, Katherine Cathey was napping in her bedroom. Her stepfather saw the Marines first.
”We’re here for Katherine," the major said quietly.
”Oh, no," Vic Leonard said.
At first Katherine’s mother thought it was a salesman. Then she saw her husband walking backward and the two men in uniform.
”Oh, no," she said, and then, ”She’s pregnant!"
Vic asked his wife to wake up Katherine. Vicki Leonard shook her head. She couldn’t speak.
When her stepfather opened the door to her bedroom, Katherine could hear her mother crying—no, wailing. She had never heard her mother cry like that.
”What’s going on?" Katherine asked her stepfather.
”It’s not good," he told her. ”Come with me."
Her own screams began as soon as she saw the uniforms.
Katherine ran to the back of the living room and collapsed on the floor, holding her pregnant stomach and thinking of the man who would never see their baby. Finally she stood, but she still couldn’t speak. As the major and the chaplain remained on their feet, she glared at them. It was a stare the major had seen before, the one that hurts the most.
The pregnant woman ran to the back of the house and drew a hot bath. For the next hour she sat in the tub, dissolving.
As the chaplain looked over the family, Major Beck ducked back outside to make a quick phone call.
Inside an SUV in Reno, Nevada, just around the corner from the home where Jim Cathey grew up, another military cell phone rang.
THE TOOL CABINET was a mess.
Jim Cathey’s mother stood in the garage in Reno, trying to find the right wrench to fix a sprinkler head in her front yard. Then the dog began barking, and she had to bring him inside. Her husband had left that morning on a long drive, scouting his favorite hunting ground.
What a frustrating morning, she thought as she gave up on looking for the wrench. She would have to make a quick trip to the hardware store.
When the SUV pulled up, the Marines inside assumed someone was home — after all, a lawn mower sat outside and a sprinkler head was exposed, leaving a job unfinished. Maybe the parents had just stepped inside. The Marines made the long walk. No one answered the door.
They retreated to the vehicle. A neighbor drove up, glanced at the Marines, and pulled into an adjacent driveway. Once inside, the neighbor looked out a window at them. The Marines shifted in their seats—as if they weren’t uncomfortable enough already.
When Caroline Cathey drove up, she saw the government vehicle that didn’t belong on the street and then fixed her eyes on the man in the driver’s seat.
”Time to go," Captain Winston Tierney said.
Caroline Cathey’s hands went to her face.
Tierney and his men walked quickly to the woman, who looked as if she might faint. The captain tried to give her a hug, supporting her weight.
”Please don’t let it be," she said.
”I’m sorry to have to be here today. Can we go inside and sit down? There are some things we need to confirm."
”Please tell me it’s not Jimmy Please tell me it’s not my son."
The Marines stayed with the Catheys for the next ten hours. With Caroline’s help they contacted Jim Cathey’s nine-year-old daughter, Casey, who was born while he was still in high school. Like many Marines, Cathey had already lived a complicated and at times rudderless life before entering the Corps. Along with the child he had fathered while still a boy, he also married and divorced another woman who was not the mother of the child— long before he met Katherine. Still, when the time came to pin on his lieutenant’s bars at the most important ceremony of his life, he chose Casey and Katherine to pin the rank on his shoulder.
A few hours after the Marines showed up at the Catheys’ door, young Casey’s mother and stepfather drove the girl from Carson City, Nevada, to Reno where another one of the Marines—an operations chief who had children of his own—told her that her daddy had been hurt in the war and wouldn’t be able to come back. He asked her if she understood. She answered with tears.
Meanwhile, the Marines had contacted the state police to look for Jeff Cathey, Jim’s father, since they knew he suffered from clinical depression and would take the news especially hard.
Late that night, Jeff Cathey pulled into his driveway and saw the Marines at the door. He heard their message and then drove to the home of his parents, who lived only a few blocks away. The family would take it from there.
When it was all over, the exhausted Marines climbed back into the silver SUV. A staff sergeant looked at Captain Tierney.
”Sir," he said, ”please don’t take me on another one of these."