‘'He's from here'

‘Taps' is played at the cemetery. (The Daily Triplicate/Bryant Anderson).

By Nicholas Grube

It had been two weeks since Capt. Bruno de Solenni's death brought the painful reality of war home to Crescent City.

On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered to mourn the loss of the Oregon Army National Guardsman who grew up in Del Norte County and died in Afghanistan.

When they arrived at St. Joseph's Catholic Church for the burial Mass, they were greeted with a military display fit for a hero.

As the Oregon Military Funeral Honors team stood at attention waiting to carry de Solenni's casket into the church, the somber whine of a bagpipe filled the air and members of the Patriot Guard Riders lined the sidewalks dressed in their biker attire and holding U.S. flags.

It didn't matter to Matt Keene that he had never met Bruno de Solenni. Keene stood in the rain on a corner outside St. Joseph's with his two children. He did not go into the church, but was still on the corner when the service ended, his clothes wet from the soggy weather. Only his children had gone home.

"It's respectful," Keene said. "He's from here."

Like Keene, Teri Still watched St. Joseph's from a distance.

She sat on the front porch of a house across the street, crying over the loss of a person she had met years before, but who had always held a special place in her memory.

"It's something that just breaks your heart," Still said in between tears. "He's one of our own. It hits close to home."

Perhaps it was this sense of proximity, or maybe it was because de Solenni was loved and respected by most who met him, but Crescent City showed up in force for his funeral. American flags lined H Street. The crosswalk in front of the church even sported a fresh coat of paint.

Of the hundreds of people who wanted to pay their respects, more than 50 were left standing at the entrance of the packed building.

They watched as members of the Funeral Honors Team carried de Solenni's flag-draped casket into the church's foyer, where the red, white and blue was replaced with a white and blue funeral pall.

While the change was a symbol of de Solenni's baptism, it also seemed to signify a transition from soldier to Crescent City native.

Inside the church, both of his families were represented, his parents and siblings on one side of the aisle, his brothers in arms on the other.

The American flag didn't go back atop the casket until the service had concluded.

The concept of de Solenni as a citizen-soldier in the National Guard surfaced many times during the Mass, especially during addresses by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Maj. Gen. Raymond Rees.

"He was from a very small community on the edge of our country. But he defended our entire nation," Kulongoski said. "He was truly the best our country had to give."

Rees, adjunct general of the Oregon National Guard, mentioned de Solenni's life away from military service, when he was living in Del Norte County as a timber faller and a fisherman.

"As a son of Del Norte County, of Crescent City, a son who worked in the forest and on the sea ... his character was shaped by his parents, by his family and friends and his community," Rees said. "Beneath that name tag, Bruno Giancarlo de Solenni, a man who lived and worked among us all, beneath that name tag beat a hero's heart."

Devotion to duty kept de Solenni from the safe embrace of his home and family, and made him return to the Middle East for a third tour, said St. Joseph's Father Frank Epperson.

"There is the camaraderie which comes from men and women working together for something beyond them — for peace, for freedom," Epperson said. "To Bruno, being a soldier in today's world meant that he volunteered to put himself in harm's way, no matter where it might bring him.

"Sadly, it brought him to Afghanistan, to a battle far away and too complicated to be easily understood."

It was there de Solenni died, the victim of an improvised explosive device, but it is here where the ramifications of his death are still felt.

As his casket, built out of lumber he had helped cut, was carried from the church, Crescent City followed.

The funeral procession traveled down H Street, flags guiding the way to de Solenni's final resting place.

At the cemetery, fire trucks lined up with their lights flashing. Volunteer firefighters stood next to a ladder truck with a giant American flag hanging over a shelter where de Solenni's parents would receive gifts no parent would want.

Shots rang out as seven soldiers fired three rounds apiece into the air. A bugler played "Taps" as a light drizzle fell.

de Solenni's casket was marched to a hole dug Thursday by his brothers and friends.

It is here that de Solenni, the only local soldier to die in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will stay. But his sacrifice lives on, reminding Del Norters of battles unfolding thousands of miles away.

To date, 4,751 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since the U.S. invasions.

Bruno de Solenni is one man.

This is one town.