Arnold, Andrew Todd
A yellow ribbon girded the oak
tree outside Tim and Shelia Kufel’s home during weeks of Middle
East war to honor their Marine nephew who left Houma as a small
boy many years ago.
A ribbon of black now graces the
tree as well, along with a photo of the nephew, Chief Warrant
Officer Andrew Todd Arnold, killed as the result of a weapons
accident in Iraq on April 22.
"This is a young man that was a
dedicated father and a dedicated husband," Shelia Kufel said
Wednesday. "He was also very dedicated to his parents and aunts
and uncles and cousins, a very loving young man, very quiet. But
he was a very proud Marine."
Arnold, who would have turned 31 in
November, was a member of the 1st Battalion, 10th Marine
Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. He was one of three
marines killed when a seized Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade
launcher that they were firing "for familiarization"
malfunctioned.
Arnold spent most of his formative
years in Spring, Texas, a Houston-area town of 36,000 where his
father, Jim Arnold, Shelia Kufel’s brother, works as a private
airplane pilot. His mother, Mary, is a homemaker who once worked
in a Houston bank.
"They are very strong in their
Catholic faith," Shelia Kufel said. "Of course they are
devastated, but they are trying to be strong."
In Houma, word of Arnold’s death
devastated Shelia Kufel who, like many other relatives of
service members during the U.S. push into Iraq from Kuwait,
stayed glued to her television set during the early phases of
the conflict.
"I was constantly watching, hoping
to get a glimpse of him, and even wrote him a letter that I
don’t even know if he received," Shelia Kufel said.
The elite unit Arnold was assigned
to -- called Task Force Tarawa -- played a key role in the
costly battle of Nasiriyah. That his death occurred at a time
when the threat of harm to U.S. service members after the taking
of Baghdad appeared to have waned compounds the family’s pain.
"Day by day I cried, for two days
straight until my eyes could barely open," Shelia Kufel said. "I
had a country music channel on the television the other night,
and they played some songs that made me break down again. I am
going through the motions of everyday life, but I have my
moments where it seems so unreal."
DIAPER RASH CREAM
A bond between aunt and nephew
formed early, when Arnold lived in Houma with his family as a
toddler. As an adult, he often visited while traveling to or
from his parents’ home in Texas.
Shelia Kufel often babysat the boy
she called Andy, along with his older brother and sister, James
and Michele.
Warm memories now mingle with the
harsh imaginings of the price paid in war. Kufel recalls that
when caring for the children, Andy needed feeding first.
"By the time I got to him he would
be sleeping in his high chair, he would just nod over," she
said.
There was the time, too, when Andy
and his older brother tried to appear as if they were shaving,
covering their heads and faces not with shaving cream but diaper
rash ointment.
"I put them in the tub, so upset and
so tickled at the same time," she recalled.
A career Marine, the grown-up Andrew
Arnold wed a South Carolina woman in 1994, Lisa Sellers. He met
her at Camp Lejeune, where she still lives with their two
children, 8-year-old Austin and 5-year-old Jessica.
Shelia Kufel talked with Lisa on
Easter Sunday and was told then that Andy would be heading back
to Kuwait with his unit soon, further out of harm’s way. Then,
on Wednesday, came the phone call that made that prediction ring
false.
"Austin was fearful when his daddy
left, now he keeps asking when is his dad’s funeral," Kufel
said. "Jessica is very much a daddy’s girl. She cried and wanted
her daddy to stay home. She wanted to be able to kiss her daddy
in the casket."
Relatives are not certain if that
will be possible. The Marine’s body arrived this week at Dover
Air Force Base; visitation is scheduled for Monday in Virginia
with a hero’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery Tuesday.
NOT IN VAIN
In the Kufel household there were
questions at the start of war about its advisability or
necessity. Tim Kufel, an oilfield worker, supported the troops
but was not certain at first if war was the right path.
"My husband one time asked me, "How
would you feel if something happened to Andrew?’ "Shelia Kufel
said. "We can answer that question now.
"We were there for the right
reasons, and Andrew believed we were there for the right
reasons," she said. "Even if we never find weapons of mass
destruction, he had them in the past, and these people, to be
free, and to know that Andrew himself was glad to be able to
free those people from the oppression. He will not, he did not
die in vain."
As word of Andrew Arnold’s death
trickled to neighbors in the small, quiet subdivision where the
Kufel's built their home 19 years ago, there were visits and
calls of condolence. Neighbors Charlene and George Kenneker --
who gifted the Kufel's with the yellow ribbon that embodied
wishes of a safe return -- also supplied the black one that
tells the story’s unexpected end.
Charlene Kenneker bought the black
ribbon at a store called the Christmas Place, where proprietor
Danny LeBouef charged no fee.
"I just gave it to her," LeBouef. "I
wish we could do more."
The ribbons and the Marine’s photo
now bathe in spring sunlight and the sweet fragrance of Shelia
Kufel’s gardenia bushes, alive with new white blooms.
"It will be hard to ever take it
down." she said.
A Texas soldier is among three
Marines from Camp Lejeune killed while they were handling a
rocket-propelled grenade launcher, U.S. Central Command says.
Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Todd
Arnold of Spring, Texas, was identified Thursday afternoon as
one of those killed.
Jim and Mary Arnold of Spring said
they thought that as the war in Iraq appeared to be winding
down, their 30-year-old son had been spared from harm. But the
couple learned this week that he was among three Marines killed
when an Iraqi weapon they were testing malfunctioned.
"They were so relieved the war was
almost over, then three Marines showed up at their door,"
neighbor Charlotte Coin told the Houston Chronicle. Her children
grew up with Andrew Arnold and his siblings on a cul-de-sac in
the Candlelight Hills subdivision.
Coin said the Arnolds were notified
Tuesday evening about the death on a firing range. She said Mary
Arnold called her soon afterward.
Coin and another neighbor, Merilyn
Jerome, have known the family for more than 20 years. They said
the couple had flown to North Carolina on Wednesday to comfort
their son's wife, Lisa, and their two children, Austin, 8, and
Jessica, 5.
Arnold, a chief warrant officer, was
assigned to the 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine
Expeditionary Brigade, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
"He had just called his wife on
Easter morning and he told her that he had two more days in Iraq
then on to Kuwait to work on howitzers," Coin said, adding that
Arnold's tour was expected to last a little more than a month.
She said Arnold joined the Marines
right after he graduated from Klein Oak High School in 1990.
Arnold's father and grandfather had also served in the Marines,
Coin said.
"He did what he thought was right,"
Coin said about Arnold's enlistment. "We'll keep him in our
hearts forever."
Arnold is survived by his wife,
Lisa, a 9-year-old son, Austin, and a 5-year-old daughter,
Jessica.
"(Arnold) had called Easter morning
and talked to Lisa and the children," Cynthia Martinez, Lisa
Arnold's best friend, told The Daily News of Jacksonville. "This
was the first time they had spoken since he left. He thought
he'd be coming home in a month to three months.
"We're all just in shock because the
war's supposed to be over,"
Family members of the other victims
identified Lance Corporal Alan D. Lam, 19, of Snow Camp, North
Carolina, and Robert Channell, 36, a chief warrant officer from
Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Wednesday.
Seven soldiers were injured in the
blast Tuesday evening in a remote area near the southern Iraqi
city of Kut, officials said.
The Marines with the 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force were firing the RPG -- one of the more
common weapons used by paramilitary, Fedayeen and other groups
that have threatened U.S. and British forces -- to familiarize
themselves with it.
The launcher malfunctioned, Central
Command said. The accident is under investigation.
Lam was a member of the 8th
Communications unit based at Camp Lejeune, said Capt. George
Palaima from the Greensboro-based Marine Corps Reserve unit.
Palaima was one of the military representatives who informed
Lam's parents of his death.
Chief Warrant Officer David Dennis
told The Associated Press on Thursday he understood that an
adjacent unit -- not Lam's unit -- was firing the RPG when the
launcher malfunctioned.
Funeral arrangements were
incomplete, and the body remained overseas, he said.
Lam graduated from Southern Alamance
High School in 2001, and graduated from basic training at Parris
Island, S.C., in early 2002.
Southern Alamance Principal Kent
Byrd remembered Lam as a talented artist who worked on the
school newspaper staff.
"We are just so deeply saddened at
the loss and just grieve for the family," Byrd said. "If you
wanted to choose the kind of kid you'd like to have on your high
school campus, Alan would be an example of that."
Channell, part of a transportation
unit, joined the Marines in 1986 at age 19.
"We really don't know what
happened," Mark Sutton, Channell's stepfather, told The
Tuscaloosa News. "They don't really tell you much."
