Kristofer Walker, George Obourn honored at school ceremony as inseparable friends

EAST PEORIA , Ill. -- As the skies darkened at East Peoria Community High School's homecoming game Friday, a musician lifted a trumpet and played taps, the notes echoing over the football field where George Obourn Jr. and Kris Walker marched in the school band before going off to war.

Two marching band hats were handed to their families, memorializing friends who had grown up together, graduated together in 2004, and then joined the Army together.

The men also were deployed to Iraq together, and in a coincidence that has stunned this central Illinois town, they died within 24 hours of each other--Obourn in a building explosion Tuesday, Walker from a roadside bomb Monday, both near Baghdad.

"It helped knowing they had each other," Debbie Obourn said of her son's friendship with Walker.

They were two of 26 soldiers killed in Iraq during the last week, the deadliest for American troops there since January, and among the deadliest for U.S. forces since the Iraq invasion, according to U.S. military tallies. The memorial service on a football field in East Peoria came as recently fallen service members were remembered across the country.

In Wakefield, Mass., 1,300 students observed a moment of silence Friday for Marine Lance Cpl. Edward M. Garvin, killed Wednesday in Iraq's Anbar province. On Wednesday, a memorial service was held for Sgt. Joseph W. Perry at Ft. Bragg, N.C., The Modesto Bee reported, after the California native's death Monday in Muhallah, Iraq. Others killed this week hailed from Highland, N.Y.; Pendleton, S.C.; San Antonio; and Brooklyn.

Obourn and Walker, both 20, members of the 7th Battalion, 10th Cavalry Regiment, were scheduled to return to the U.S. next month. Walker had been sending home letters saying he had gotten a lot from his military experience, and that he might even try joining the FBI after leaving the Army, Walker's father, Kevin, said in a halting voice before the memorial service Friday.

"He thought he could make a difference," Kevin Walker said of his son. "He had always wanted to join, especially after 9/11."

Obourn's parents, Debbie and George Sr., said their son joined the Army during the war out of a sense of duty. He brought home pictures of his work during a Father's Day visit, most of them depicting the smiling faces of Iraqi children. The young man was as proud of what he was doing in Iraq as the Obourns were of their son, his father said. Though they had moved to Naperville three years ago, they drove back to East Peoria for the Friday commemoration.

Family members, former teachers, and hometown friends recalled the young men as friendly enough to transcend school cliques and aimed at service for much of their adolescence.

At St. Peter's Lutheran Church in East Peoria, Obourn made up and delivered Christmas baskets to children who otherwise wouldn't get presents. As a teen, Walker would leap to the defense of classmates being teased, said East Peoria physical education teacher Glen Newton.

Both grew up near Peoria, got decent marks, and were involved in the school band program. Nobody could put a finger on when they enlisted in the Army together, said school Principal Paul Whittington. "It was just something when you heard they were in the armed services together, nobody was surprised," he said.

As their deaths sank in--as close together as everything else in their lives--a sense of grim acceptance grew in East Peoria.

"The boys were inseparable, so it was almost like it was meant to be," said Robin Goff, their freshman science teacher.

Friday night, the school band in which Obourn had once played the trumpet and Walker the trombone marched in to applause from the East Peoria crowd, leading teens, their families and neighbors through cheers.

But an enormous change came over the crowd as Whittington led the young men's families onto the field.

"Our heroes paid the ultimate sacrifice," Whittington said. Raucous children, the younger siblings of high school students, grew silent. Adults set their jaws or looked into the bright white lights around the field.

Two marching band hats were placed on a maroon table, officially retired in honor of the two boys who once had worn hats just like them. Taking the field, trumpeter Keith Wilfinger, 18, a returning alumnus, closed his eyes and began playing taps.

The notes came out clearly and echoed over the silent crowd.

Debbie and George Obourn Sr. held hands, as did Beth and Kevin Walker, both sets of parents in the center of a huddle of extended family, most fighting back sobs.

As the last note faded away, a dignified applause took its place, washing over the Obourn and Walker families. The marching band hats were handed to them as the national anthem began playing.

"God Bless America. God Bless Kris and George," the principal said.

His part over, Wilfinger walked off the field, his face set, to a wall 50 feet away at the bottom of the grandstand.

Alone under the crowd and out of sight, he put a hand over his eyes and began sobbing.

From the Chicago Tribune

They were inseparable

CREVE COEUR -- "Taps" sounded mournfully over the homecoming crowd at Clatt Stadium before East Peoria Community High School's game with Pekin on Friday.

The somber mood over what is usually an energetically festive occasion was in honor of two soldiers, classmates and inseparable friends who died last week in Iraq.

The news of their deaths earlier in the week, too confusing and shuddering to be absorbed at first, has flattened the community of Creve Coeur and the high school the inseparable friends had graduated from in 2004.

Principal Paul Whittington thought the phone call he was taking Wednesday was another one to inform him that Kristofer Walker had been killed at Baghdad on Monday.

"Then I realized he was talking about George," Whittington said Thursday. George, who had walked the school's hallways, marched in its band, graduated, endured boot camp afterward and fought in Iraq -- all virtually side-by-side with Walker -- had also died, only a few miles and a day apart from his lifelong best friend.

Walker "thought about the same thing" as his friend, whom everyone called Junior, said his father, Kevin Walker. "He just always wanted to join the Army."

The two had done everything together, said Obourn's mother, Debrann, who now lives with her husband in Naperville. "They joined the Army in the buddy system" less than three months after graduating from high school in 2004, she said, and planned to become law enforcement officers, possibly with the FBI, after their Army service.

"They were both coming home in late November," she said, to Fort Hood, Texas, after their tours in Iraq, where they had previously served in the same unit and were never far apart.

"They didn't patrol together" in Iraq after their first year, "but I understand they did see each other," Kevin Walker said. Both were specialists assigned to the Army's 4th Infantry Division.

Neither family knows whether Obourn learned that Walker had been killed Monday morning before he went on his last patrol the next day.

According to information they've received, Walker was one of four soldiers killed when an explosive device of some sort blew up their Humvee in the Baghdad area. Military officials who contacted them Monday night "said it happened in the morning," Kevin said.

The news quickly passed to Obourn's family. Then came their own call. Junior, they were told, was killed while patrolling for insurgents in an abandoned Baghdad-area building.

"That's all we know right now," Debrann Obourn said. The Department of Defense by Thursday had not yet posted official details of either Walker's or Obourn's deaths on its Web site.

At the high school, students learned of the deaths of the two former classmates, whom many of them remember personally, by reading the Journal Star, which is made available to students for a reading period each Thursday.

The double tragedy came the week of the school's homecoming.

Special services were to be added at the start of Friday's football game, with an announcement about their deaths, a moment of silence, and the school ban playing taps.

Debrann Obourn said she and husband, George Sr., would attend.

Only two falls ago, the younger Obourn played trumpet and Walker trombone in the school's homecoming band presentation, Whittington said.

Now, their funeral services await the return of the two friends' remains. "We don't know when that will be," Kevin Walker said. Debrann Obourn said her family will ask that donations for her son be directed to his high school band's program.

Both families, meanwhile, want the community to know how proud the men were to serve their country and how proud they are of their fallen sons.

From the Daily Journal

Related Link:
Kristofer Walker killed by roadside bomb

Related Link:
George Obourn killed by small weapons fire