Family & Friends Mourn for Ciara
The Boston Herald has a report on the memorial service for Specialist Ciara Durkin.
From The Herald:
Hundreds of people yesterday turned out for the wake of the vibrant young Quincy National Guard member killed on an Afghan air base.
Family and friends filed past photos of Spc. Ciara Durkin, the woman they fondly nicknamed “Ciaraweerabrat,” including one picture of her at the hospital beside a contractor whose life she saved.
“She was amazing,” said one friend who remembered her quick wit and contagious smile, but declined to say more. “I don’t have the words to do her justice,” she said.
“She knew her own mind and was a free spirit,” said a Dorchester woman whose daughter went to school with Durkin. “If the subject came up and she had an opinion about it, she wasn’t afraid to say it.”
Mystery surrounds the death of the 30-year-old soldier who was found with a single bullet wound in her head last week on a secure military base in what the Pentagon so far will describe only as a non-combat incident.
The eighth of nine children, Durkin had five sisters, three brothers and numerous friends. For nearly six hours yesterday, a steady stream of them pulled into the parking lot of Dennis Sweeney Funeral Home, so many a handful of police was dispatched to control traffic on an ordinarily quiet stretch of Elm Street.
Durkin, who was openly gay, worked as a volunteer for Mass-Equality, an organization that promotes marriage equality. She was engaged to be married.
A member of the 726th Finance Battalion, Durkin was decorated nine times by the military. At the funeral home yesterday, many of her medals and citations lay next to her flag-draped coffin, as a soldier stood on either side.
“As Ciara had requested, her remains will be cremated,” a statement from the Durkin family said. “A portion of her ashes will be brought to Ireland to be buried with her father in Galway. Another portion will stay in Quincy at the home of her sister, Deidre. The remaining ashes will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia with full military honors.”
Photo by John Wilcox for the Boston HeraldLabels: ciara durkin, in the news
-----10-06-07
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