Quietly, Patrick keeps up a somber duty

[friendly_iconoclast]

Source: Boston Globe

Quietly, Patrick keeps up a somber duty
Governor at funerals of all service members
By Matt Viser and Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | May 14, 2009

He has wept with a father in Swampscott and laughed along with the other congregants at the bittersweet stories told from the pulpit. Some funerals are in English, others in Spanish. They have been held in Centerville and Chicopee, in Wilmington and Woburn, in all corners of the state.

Yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick attended his 34th funeral or memorial service for a service member killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this one for Petty Officer Tyler J. Trahan, a 22-year-old from East Freetown who died when a roadside bomb exploded in Fallujah.

This is Patrick's view of war, not of the front lines of battle or the conference rooms where policy is set, but along the edge of human grief, in one church after the next, watching families come to terms with the suddenness and depths of their loss.

He has witnessed entire towns halt in honor of deceased soldiers, canceling classes as complete strangers come to pay respects to a man they never knew. At a funeral in a largely Hispanic church in Revere, Patrick welled up with patriotism as immigrants, many of them said to be undocumented, wouldn't leave the service before singing "God Bless America."....

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/05/14/quietly_patrick_keeps_up_a_somber_duty/

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I've been known to kick Deval around when he does something I don't like. But when he does the right
thing, I think it should be noted.

Well done, Governor Patrick.

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. I'm glad this was noted.

Deval Patrick has been taking plenty of hits lately, but this is very noteworthy.

I commend him for doing this.

[Xipe Totec]

2. I stood in front of him to vote last November

He votes in my district, and he waited in line, just like everybody else.

The man has class.

[Mnemosyne]

3. And * never made it to even one funeral, iirc. n/t