Christopher Anderson remembered by friends, family

LONGMONT — The late Christopher Anderson’s Navy mug shot shows off his game face: no smile, intense eyes, freshly shaven face.

But a buddy from Longs Peak Middle School in Longmont laughed remembering him slow-dancing with a broom during a Valentine’s Day boy-girl party at her home for seventh-grade classmates.

Before the party started, Megan Reese, now 24, and her mother wrote truth-or-dare-type notes and inserted them into balloons. Partygoers then took turns popping a balloon and following the instructions.

Anderson’s dare instructed him to waltz with the broom.

“It’s just good that he got that one because he didn’t care what other people thought of him,” the University of Colorado at Boulder graduate student said.

Anderson, 24, who died Dec. 4 serving as a medic to the Marines in Iraq, cared about other people, Reese said.

She remembered the 2000 Longmont High School graduate socializing with people from different cliques in middle and high school.

“He literally walked with a bounce in his step. He was always smiling, always cracking jokes,” Reese said.

Early one morning during her senior year at Longmont High, she found his cheerfulness aggravating. He snapped her photo when she felt tired and looked messy, with heavy black eyeliner and a loose pony tail.

Anderson later gave her a print of that photo on a gold foil background titled “Golden Mornings.”

“As angry as I was then, (that gift) told me something about his ability to see something beautiful in everything,” Reese explained.

Another middle school friend, Jamie Spreer, 24, called Anderson a life-of-the-
party type who once came through her checkout line at Hobby Lobby, where she worked during high school.

“He bought $20 worth of stuff in change just so I could stand there and count it,” she said.

She fell out of contact with Anderson after graduation, though, and took the news of his death with disbelief.

“When I heard, I was like, ‘Are you sure it’s him?’ That’s a really common name,” said Spreer, a student at the Institute of Animal Technology in Denver.

First Lt. Taylor Wetzbarger, 24, met Anderson on the middle school track team and remembered him running the 90-meter hurdles with a broken toe.

“He toughed it out anyway,” Wetzbarger said by phone from Fort Bragg, N.C. “That was pretty indicative of his personality and his fortitude.”

Anderson’s old friends grappled to accept his death as they recalled his life.

“He’s from our town,” Reese said. “He was my age, but I barely recognized him (in his mug shot). Very handsome. ... He was almost frozen in time for me. I had forgotten that he grew up, too.”

From the Daily Times

Reflecting on a son's life

LONGMONT — When Chris Anderson’s mother picked up the telephone at 5 a.m. a month ago, she heard shelling in the background.

The Navy hospital corpsman — calling from Iraq, where he was stationed with his Marine unit — told her not to worry. He holed up in a bombed-out building’s bathroom, hunkered down and talked for a few more minutes.

His parents, Debra and Rick Anderson of Longmont, understood their son worked in harm’s way.

But when the Navy reported the 2000 Longmont High School graduate was killed Dec. 4 “as a result of enemy action” in Anbar province, overwhelming grief caused them to lay low.

On Monday, however, Rick Anderson and his son Kyle Anderson opened up about the late sailor, whose body will be flown today from Dover Air Force Base, Del., to Denver International Airport and escorted by police to Longmont.

“He was where he needed to be, doing what he needed to do,” said Rick Anderson, 49. “There’s a God that has a plan, even when we don’t understand it.”

The father emphasized that his son voluntarily enlisted during wartime in 2005.

When assigned to a Marine battalion, Chris Anderson first memorized the medical records of every Marine in his care, Rick Anderson said. That way, he could avoid fumbling with paperwork or straining to read charts in the dark during a crisis.

“He never referred to them as ‘the Marines,’” Rick Anderson added. “He called them ‘my Marines.’”

The family declined to share details about how Chris Anderson, 24, died, but offered insights on how he lived.

Looking his father and everyone else in the eye became something of a trademark for the sailor, Rick Anderson said.

“He’d talk to everybody and anybody,” he said.

After finishing high school, Chris Anderson took a job as a department store clothing salesman.

“He’d sell a $300 tie, and at the same time, he’d talk to a homeless man outside of the Dairy Queen on north Main,” Rick Anderson said. “He’d look them in the eye and shake their hand.”

Chris Anderson also related well to children, his family said.

When home on leave from the Navy, he wore his fatigues and wrestled on the lawn with the neighborhood kids — something made bittersweet by his experiences in Iraq, his father said.

“It bothered him that those (Iraqi) kids couldn’t play in their own front yard without a real chance of being killed,” Rick Anderson said.

On Monday, the Anderson home smelled like a flower shop. A spray of white gladiolas, classic funeral flowers, topped the living room piano. A conspicuous number of tissue boxes littered the coffee table and floor.

A handwritten note from a child leaned against the piano’s music rest. It read:

To Christopher’s Parents. I’m so very sorry that you’re son died on Monday. I know how you feel. You feel terrible because my grandpa died, so I know how you feel. Good luck with your bad luck. Now he’s an Angel. love Madison Emery. PS — I’m sad too.

About 10 neighbor children decorated the family’s Christmas tree during the first week of mourning.

“I hadn’t touched the tree other than to put it in the stand,” Rick Anderson said. “But we still want to celebrate Christmas. If it wasn’t for my faith, this would not be going the way it has.”

Friends and strangers have reached out to lend an ear and share a hug, Rick Anderson said.

“We’ve had some very emotional conversations,” he said. “Some people walk in, and they’re already crying when they walk in the door.”

Another comfort comes from the confidence Chris Anderson demonstrated as a boy and, later, as a military man in a war zone.

Chris Anderson earned certification as the youngest umpire in the state during his early teens, Rick Anderson said. In that role, he would stand up to irate mothers and middle-age men who questioned his calls.

Some of the arguments got heated enough that his mother feared for his safety, said brother Kyle Anderson, 22.

“She would say (to Chris), ‘You tell them you’re only 15, and if they hit you, they’re going to jail,’” he recalled. “He would tell my mother, ‘It’s OK. It’s part of the game.’”

From the Times-Call

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