LITTLE ROCK — Iwas picking through a plate of baked beans and barbecue at the third annual City Charity Golf Tournament in Harrison when Boone County Judge Mike Moore told the story.
The former 3rd District congressional candidate explained that on the previous day he’d attended the funeral of Army Pfc. Clayton McGarrah, the 20-year-old Airborne soldier from Harrison who died in Afghanistan on the Fourth of July from an IED explosion.
“I’d never imagined anything like the sight I saw yesterday,” Moore said. “From the time we left the funeral service at a church south of Harrison, the roads and streets were lined with people all the way to the cemetery, like the whole city was there. They were standing in places you wouldn’t expect to see folks.”
The scene of all those people saying farewell to McGarrah, who’d spent his youth longing to become a soldier, touched Moore.
“Man, it was really tough for me to keep from crying,” he said. “There had to be well over a thousand folks paying their respects between the church and the cemetery.”
One woman stood with her right hand over her heart while holding a small American flag in her left for the lengthy procession.
“Clayton’s death touched a lot of people here on a deep level,” Moore said. He said he couldn’t tell for certain how many people filed into the cemetery overlooking the city protected by the Patriot Guard motorcycle group.
Moore had seen the hate literature circulated in Harrison by the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas shortly before McGarrah’s funeral. He expected the group to follow its usual pattern of showing up to protest at the cemetery.
The disgusting Kansas clan regularly protests at the funerals of fallen U.S. soldiers. Its hateful members say that these war deaths are God’s wrath for America’s tolerance of gays and lesbians. They enjoy parading with signs such as “God hates you” and “You’re in hell.”
Moore said that before the service he called a meeting of the county’s Quorum Court, which immediately passed a local law banning such disruptive protests at funerals.
“The Westboro people never did show up,” he said. “But they’d have been stopped if they had. The funeral would have been finished before they could have challenged it. They weren’t about to do that sort of thing in Boone County as long as I had any say.”
Some media organizations have defended Westboro’s tactics as distasteful but covered as free speech under the First Amendment. I’m not so certain. If my outlandish, hate-filled rhetoric at any intimate gathering of family and friends inflicts physical or mental harm or emotional distress on the people who’ve gathered, then it sounds to me a lot like the same issue as my nonexistent free-speech “right” to scream fire in a crowded theater.
The Supreme Court is likely to decide that matter.
The story that Moore told was made even more moving for me by the soulful wails from a bagpiper that the mayor had secured to pace the 330 yards from the first green to the clubhouse before play began. (Moore was playing on a team with Harrison Mayor Pat Moles, himself a disabled Vietnam veteran, who created the annual three-person charity scramble.)
I have a feeling that Clayton Mc-Garrah’s ultimate sacrifice was still on the minds of many in my hometown on that day. And will be from now on.
One job or other
Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder didn’t really have a choice but to release 21-year-old Deputy Jessie Lunderby, his petite jailer turned celebrated Playboy Internet pin-up, from her more serious county responsibilities last week.
I’d have done the same thing under such bizarre circumstances. The sheriff’s job is plenty tough enough without having to deal with an issue like this.
The seediness here is amplified in a world where male counterparts and a jail filled with men are involved directly with an Internet centerfold who is quoted in her photo spread talking about what gets her “in the mood.”
My view is simple. Lunderby is free to pose for any sex-oriented magazine she chooses. She’s even free to add highly provocative comments to the photographs that show her scantily clad. Why, she was hailed as Playboy’s “Cyber Girl of the Week.” I say good for you, Jessie. You go, girl.
But the ensuing disorder, the continuing barrage of public and internal responses to the revelation of her modeling sideline and the potentially violent population inside a large jail all made her choice an impossible fit with the serious job that the sheriff needs done professionally. There’s noooo way these conflicting career aspirations could ever mesh.
I tried to imagine how the male prisoners-and many fellow officers-were likely to perceive Lunderby after her national exposure. A fellow deputy who discovered a photo of her on the Internet already had wound up with a sexual harassment complaint lodged against him for discussing her sideline with her, according to a news account.
Lunderby, who’d been on paid leave since early June when this controversy arose, was said to be unavailable for comment after being stripped of her uniform last week. Her Facebook page reportedly explained that she was traveling to Chicago, where she was slated to appear at the Exxxtacy 2010 convention as part of its “Hottest Scandals of 2010 Tour.”
Looks like the sheriff’s actions actually helped spice up Lunderby’s fledgling flaunting in the private sector.
Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 13 on 07/20/2010