Corey Rystad laid to rest

RED LAKE FALLS, MINN. -- Four days before the funeral, Roger Johanneck walked through St. Joseph's Catholic Cemetery, surveying the ground where Corey Rystad would be buried.
He had a job to do, an assignment from his friend Jim Rystad, Corey's father.

"For a soldier who's done something for you, sacrificed for you, it feels good to do something for him," Johanneck, 53, said Wednesday, his assignment completed.

"You can read names in the paper," he said. "A soldier from someplace in South Carolina dies, and you try to visualize where that town is, and you feel bad.

"But when it's your town, when it's a name and face you know, it really hits home."

In a little cemetery in a small town in one of Minnesota's smallest counties, Rystad was laid to rest with military honors Wednesday after a funeral watched by more than 1,000 people at St. Joseph's Catholic Church and in overflow halls.

They came from Red Lake Falls, pop. 1,661, where the schools, city offices and some businesses closed for the service, and they came from the nearby hamlets of St. Hilaire, Dorothy, Gentilly and Terrebonne, the names reflecting heavy French-Canadian settlement of the county in the 1870s, leavened since by Germans and Scandinavians.

"We're pretty tight," said Mayor Bob (Rabbit) Philion. "If one person is grieving here, we're all grieving."

At the request of people in Thief River Falls, Baudette, Karlstad and other communities throughout northwestern Minnesota, local cable and telephone companies arranged to broadcast the funeral live.

"The people up there asked for that," Philion said. "They wanted to be part of this."

Added the Rev. Tim Bushy, pastor at St. Joseph's: "This is a region where people and towns work together very cooperatively in all areas of living, all areas of life."

Another Gold Star Mother

Minnesota National Guard Specialist Corey Rystad was killed on Dec. 2, less than a month shy of his 21st birthday, when a roadside bomb rocked the Humvee in which he was riding near Fallujah.

Spec. Bryan McDonough, 22, of Maplewood, also was killed in the blast, and their friend Sgt. John Kriesel, 25, from Vadnais Heights, lost both of his legs.

Rystad's death brought to 50 the number of service personnel with strong ties to Minnesota who have died in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was the first from Red Lake Falls and the first from the Crookston Diocese of the Catholic Church. Bishop Victor Balke presided at his funeral.

Among the funeral prayers Wednesday was one for "all the factions in Iraq" and elsewhere in the Middle East, "that God will inspire them with a new vision and give them courage to work for peace."

At a prayer service that drew about 1,500 people Tuesday night, Gold Star Mother Alice Longtin of Red Lake Falls, whose son Mark was killed in Vietnam, presented a gold star to Donna Rystad.

Flags flew at half-staff outside City Hall, the post office, the Red Lake County Courthouse and Hillcrest Nursing Home on Wednesday. They were lowered, too, at Lafayette High School and at the Gunder Austad American Legion Post.

The war in Iraq "is closer to us now, more real for many of us," Bushy said in his homily. "We have rallied together today to support and walk with one another through ... our loss and our grief."

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Sen. Mark Dayton and Congressman Collin Peterson joined a military honor guard to salute Corey Rystad's casket as it was carried down the church steps. About 80 members of the Patriot Guard motorcycle group, which had been invited by the Rystad family, stood with raised flags to shield the family from any protests. But there were none.

Building a bridge

Johanneck had talked with Jim Rystad shortly after the news about Corey arrived.

Johanneck felt helpless and struggled to find something to say.

"There's something you can do," Jim Rystad told his friend. "Could you build a bridge?"

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people will be at the funeral, he said. St. Joseph's can take maybe 350, and people were arranging for overflow seating in the community hall, high school and library.

But where will people park at the little cemetery a mile outside of town?

On Saturday, after farmer Knute Knutson offered a pinto bean field next to the cemetery, after volunteers cleared snow and graded the tilled field smooth, providing room for 500 cars, Johanneck and friends finished the project: building a bridge over a drainage ditch, connecting the new parking lot to the rural cemetery.

A carpenter friend helped. So did Johanneck's son. The local lumberyard donated wood, and they put together a 24-foot span, about 4 feet wide, with railings and a slip-proof rug.

"Gosh, we don't want the governor falling into a drainage ditch and breaking a leg," Johanneck said. "We'll never get any state aid up here then."

They joked as they worked. They laughed. It helped, Johanneck said.

As it happened, mourners couldn't use the field. It was too nice a day -- bright sun, unseasonably warm temperatures -- and the ground turned to gumbo.

Still, Johanneck said, it felt good to do something.

"At the wake, I tried to imagine how I would feel if it was my son lying in that casket," he said. "I just couldn't do it."

It helped to hear funny stories about Corey the prankster, and stories that soldiers from his unit told about his loyalty and friendship and how he shared things from home.

"That was a good reflection on his family, his folks," Johanneck said. "On us."

From the Tribune

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