Covering the loss of a soldier

Not long after Sgt. Lane Tollett was killed in Iraq a call came into the newsroom from his family and we began the weeklong process of covering his return and internment.
Photographer Chuck Humel was sent to the family home.Here are his thoughts on the part of our job that every photographer, in fact everybody in the newsroom, dreads.


When you get a call or a reporter bursts into the photography department seeking a photographer to go to the family of a fallen soldier, there is a sense of dread. A soldier from close to home has been killed, and you're about to intrude upon a family who has just entered the grieving process. . .
The mechanics of going to a family's home must be negotiated. I hadn’t even gotten to the street yet – this one, Loyola Drive – and scores of homes displayed American flags and yellow ribbons in front of them.
I felt the pleasant warmth of the community that this soldier had come from. A couple of tears welled up in my lower eyelids, but there could be none of that.
Bette Pearce, the Chronicle reporter, and I walked to the front door, the door that Dave Tollett, father of the fallen 82nd Airborne Sgt. Norman Lane Tollett, later informed us that, "like a script, like you've seen in the movies," two Army representatives walked up to to inform him of the death of his eldest son. (It wasn't lost on me that I'm part of that script, too.) If you've ever had a sudden death in your family, and have to re-live it as you tell every set of relatives who come into town, this is it. But you're the “relative,” you're the representative of the bigger community, the community from outside the neighborhood, prying in.
But, that's OK. For in many ways, Sgt. Norman Lane Tollett was us, was the U.S. He joined the service, paralleling Pat Tillman, doing something about the rage we felt after 9/11 "to play for a bigger team," his mom relayed to Bette and me, hiding behind the camera between them.
Maybe you were in the stands watching #22 play, a co-captain for the Elyria Catholic Panthers, put into the action by his coach, ending his football career in 1993 with EC (as a 1994 grad). "Perhaps I was on the sidelines then, covering one of those games for the Chronicle," I wondered to myself, as Dave Tollett and Lane's mom, Marti Miller Sparks, recalled the sports activities of their son.
You're trying not to be obtrusive, searching for an angle, closing drapes that are letting blinding, backlighting sun in, waiting for a moment that “illustrates'” the loss.
A call comes to the dad, it's an Army representative telling him that Lane has arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Click/flash. Being in the home, I looked around, wondering who is that in the family history, on a shelf in the background? It’s Lane's grandfather, Marti's father, in his Air Force uniform. That would bring some history into the photograph. It turned out that Lane wore his grandfather's wings on parachute jumps. Click/flash. Too many click/flashes came before that, but this one says it all. A glare of light on the installment plan. There's a few more pictures, of course. I do what I do to show respect for Sgt. Norman Lane Tollett, to his memory, for the community's memory and to his family for letting me in, a traveling salesman, of sorts, one who's selling this story to you, but only so you can show the respect he deserves.