[B]RATTLEBORO — Vermonter Kyle Gilbert’s parents still remember the last words their only child said on the phone before the 20-year-old soldier was killed in Iraq Aug. 6, 2003: “Just don’t forget me.”
Fifteen years later, they haven’t. Neither has their community, friends and neighbors have learned after a flag-burning incident this Fourth of July.
When state leaders and national news crews flocked to Gilbert’s funeral in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, his hometown of Brattleboro stood united in grief — so much so, they dedicated a Main Street bridge in his name.
This Independence Day, local police discovered someone had burned a small American flag intended for parade spectators on the bridge’s memorial stone, spurring authorities to send a Facebook post with a security camera shot of the suspect and a call to “share this widely.”
“Our Kyle Gilbert?” replied one of the first commenters.
“If the person actually had known Kyle,” another soon added, “I’m 100 percent sure they may have chosen a different place to express their feelings.”
Some 300 comments later, it’s clear that, a decade and a half after his death, a local boy’s spirit lives on.
As those who knew him tell it, Gilbert joined the Army two weeks after graduating from high school in the carefree summer of 2001, wanting to live the television commercial: earn money while learning how to jump out of planes just like his father did a quarter-century before.
Skydiving aside, his parents, Robert and Regina, vowed to be there every step of the way. When a history of childhood migraines threatened to deny their son military admission, they lobbied the state’s congressional delegation. When their boy traveled for training in Georgia, they moved south, too.
Sept. 11 changed everything. His family couldn’t tag along when Gilbert became one of the “first boots on the ground” in Baghdad. That’s why they were back in Vermont when the paratrooper, trying to help an ambushed colleague, was killed by a sniper.
“Dear Mom and Dad,” began the handwritten note pulled from his pocket. “By the time you read this I will have died for my country. Please don’t be sad.”
Family and friends met the hearse transporting Gilbert’s flag-draped coffin at the Brattleboro town line, then walked behind it almost two miles past the hospital where he was born Jan. 16, 1983, and the car wash, gas station and wheel alignment service where he worked before enlisting.
St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church, chosen because it was the biggest house of worship in town, still couldn’t accommodate the hundreds of people who spilled out the doors and into the auditorium of the adjacent parochial school. Everyone silent, the wailing whistle of a passing train spoke for all.
Vermont would suffer more Iraq-war deaths per capita than any other state. But Gilbert was the first and so far only Brattleboro soldier to die in combat since Vietnam. That’s why so many townspeople lined the streets to watch family and friends walk behind the hearse another two miles to the cemetery.
The procession passed a monument listing the names of the 30 locals who died in World War I, the 52 who died in World War II, the three who died in Korea, and the six who died in Vietnam.
“Dedicated in loving memory of the men and women of Brattleboro who made the supreme sacrifice,” the engraving said.
That Veterans Day, a local newspaper columnist suggested a memorial for Gilbert.
“The president has been way too busy to do more than pay lip service to the casualties of his war, or to personally honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice on his behalf,” wrote the columnist, an opponent of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion. “Let’s do it for him.”
A reader responded with a $100 check. Within months, townspeople donated $10,000 for a 4-foot-tall Vermont granite marker to be placed on a newly rebuilt downtown bridge.
For some, supporting a “hometown hero” didn’t mean supporting the war. They protested plans for an etched eagle, American flag and the words “Freedom is not free” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” — the latter the Pentagon’s name for the invasion.
After a year of public debate, the town dedicated a simpler stone on Veterans Day 2004.
“Brattleboro remembers all the brave men and women who served our country or made the supreme sacrifice in Iraq,” it said. “As Kyle said, ‘Just don’t forget me.’”
His parents stood alongside a phalanx of press.
“We can’t hate the protesters — we need to keep that freedom of speech,” his mother told a reporter for USA Today. “We just wanted to remember Kyle. But things got politicized.”
The couple understood the challenge of competing forces. Interviewed on the fifth anniversary of their son’s death in 2008, they said they remembered their son daily — which was why they were divorcing.
“When we looked at each other, that’s all we thought about,” Robert told the local paper.
“We never talked about it,” Regina added. “Not talking about it split us in half.”
But while no longer a couple, the two remain united in honoring their son’s last words. Sometimes they do so at gatherings where people talk of how his mother met privately with First Lady Michelle Obama, an advocate for military families, during her visit to the state in 2011, or how his father continued to maintain the red 1969 Chevelle he bought his son for his 16th birthday.
Last month the memories spilled into social media, where police have yet to report any arrests surrounding the Fourth of July flag burning. It’s not for lack of trying. Facebook followers so far have shared the security camera shot 1,762 times.
“I put a flag on your son’s memorial stone the other day and a personal letter thanking him for his service,” wrote one local.
“At least the hero will be remembered long after we’ve forgotten the zero,” concluded another.
