Community pays tribute to soldier killed while trying to protect comrade
By RACHEL SAUER
The Daily Sentinel
Because she’s 2, because it was sunny, because she was clutching a teddy bear bigger than she is, Dusti-Rai Ferrin was not inclined to sit still. Her navy skirt bunched around her waist and her white tights wrinkled at her sturdy knees as she zig-zagged across the aisle between grandparents.
She jabbered to herself. It was the only sound.
In front of her, six soldiers lifted an American flag from an oak casket. Slowly, precisely, white-gloved hands smoothing nonexistent wrinkles, they folded it in half, then in half again.
She crawled into her grandma’s lap.
One triangle at a time. Smooth. Fold. Smooth. Fold. The red and white disappeared into a field of dark blue and white stars.
Knowing what was coming, a family friend beckoned to Dusti-Rai: Hi, sweetheart! Come over here for a minute.
Brig. Gen. Kurt S. Story approached her grandma. He bent near, extending the flag, and said, “This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation.”
The general turned to receive another folded flag, which had been ceremonially touched against the casket. He crouched in front of the wiggling Dusti-Rai. “Dusti,” he said, “this flag is presented to you for your father, on behalf of a grateful nation.”
Her father enlisted in the U.S. Army two years ago, largely because he wanted benefits and financial security for his daughter, friends said. He died Nov. 7 in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire. He’d been scheduled to return home to Norwood in six weeks.
Sgt. Aaron Cruttenden, 25, promoted to that rank after he died, came home quietly. Broken hearts greeted him.
“When you see such a young person …” Story said, then paused, and he glanced at the honor guard practicing before Cruttenden’s memorial service Wednesday. “Maybe he’s not had the opportunity to go to college, or not had the opportunity to meet his dreams, not had the opportunity to coach Little League, not had the opportunity to be a grandfather one day. It’s one of those things where we have to take comfort that he was doing what he wanted to be doing and that his actions actually saved the lives of other Americans and Afghanis.”
Cruttenden and his unit had one of the most dangerous missions in Operation Enduring Freedom, clearing routes of IEDs so other soldiers could follow, said Col. Rick Kaiser, commander of Fort Bragg’s 20th Engineer Brigade, of which Cruttenden was part.
“He risked his life to save (Sgt. Dale J.) Kridlo,” Kaiser said. Both men died in the attack. “He was an outstanding young man.”
Wednesday morning, at Western Colorado Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Grand Junction and a service at Hotchkiss Community United Methodist Church, he was laid to rest.
Old soldiers stood at attention and saluted as he was carried past. Against a flawless sky, the lead airplane in a diamond of four that had sailed around the Grand Valley suddenly shot up as the other three continued forward — the missing man.
“He was always happy,” said longtime friend Evan Allen.
Together, with a few other friends, they were the Lost Boys, Allen said.
A bell rang three times, for duty, honor and country.
“Whatever we were doing, snowboarding, spinning around in a field, Aaron took it to the extreme degree. He loved that,” said fellow Lost Boy Travis Johnson.
A soldier in dress greens, standing away from the crowd, played “Taps” on a silver trumpet.
“He was an outdoor guy,” said the Rev. Jere Wallack, a longtime family friend. “He was very, very smart at carpentry, working with his hands.”
Released from their cage, 21 white doves were a fluttering, rushing ribbon, undulating past the crowd, around the cemetery, higher and higher in the blue, blue sky.
“He loved his family,” Wallack said. “Man, he loved his family.”
Silence. Stillness. Lifting his casket, with Cruttenden’s dog tags hanging at either end, the honor guard carried it slowly back to the waiting hearse. At sidewalk’s edge were four friends from his unit — two men, two women, no older than he was — saluting, faces stoic but for the tears.
Law enforcement officers in sport utility vehicles and Patriot Guard Riders on motorcycles escorted him from the cemetery, past a single bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace.” They guided him all the way to Hotchkiss, where hundreds of students silently lined Main Street, hands over hearts as he passed.
He was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star after he died. They will be Dusti-Rai’s someday, when she can know what they mean and understand who her father was.
Wednesday, it was enough for a family friend to whisper to this small girl — with her dandelion hair and strawberry cheeks, her ocean eyes — this child who is her father’s sweetest legacy, “Your daddy was a hero.”