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Army’s failure to provide records of son’s death multiplies family’s anguish Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo
IN THE FOREGROUND FROM LEFT, Marei Spaola, Leandra Galindo and William Robbins, all of Lawrence, and Brenton Swart, Wichita, join other shoppers to spend their Thanksgiving day waiting in line at Lawrence’s Best Buy store for the midnight Black Friday opening. Spaola and Galindo were in line at 6 a.m. Thursday, while Robbins drove down to Wichita to pick up his friend Swart, to return to Lawrence to wait in line. “The lines at Best Buy in Wichita were too long,” Swart said. Specials on TVs and computers were the big attraction.
Shoppers get head start on Black Friday
By Meagan Thomas
mthomas@ljworld.com
numerous other field records. “They said, ‘We’ll have to see,’” Butler recalled, “because one should have been made.” Nine years later, Butler is still waiting for a report he may never get. As an investigation by ProPublica
While most were waking up to begin preparing their Thanksgiving day meal, a group of Lawrence residents were already camped outside of Best Buy, forgoing a day filled with turkey, pie and family Santa Claus to make for a spot in his annual downtown line for Black Lawrence visit today Friday deals. as the city flips the William switch on holiday Robbins, of lights. Page 3A Lawrence, and Brenton Swart, of Wichita, waited outside Best Buy, 2020 W. 31st St., starting at 7:30 a.m. Swart traveled to Lawrence to wait with Robbins because people had been waiting in line in
Please see ARMY, page 8A
Please see SHOPPERS, page 2A
Steve Hebert for ProPublica
JIM AND CINDY BUTLER HAVE CARVED OUT an area in their Wellsville home to remember their son Jacob, who was killed in Iraq on April 1, 2003. He was the first Kansas soldier to die in Iraq. The Butlers have gone to great lengths to find out the details of how he was killed and have had very little help from the Army in doing so.
Parents piece together details of Iraq tragedy By Peter Sleeth Special to ProPublica
WELLSVILLE — The day after Jim Butler learned his son had died in Iraq in 2003, a U.S. Army casualty officer showed up at the family’s small ranch to explain what happened. Your son was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade
in the city of As Samawah, the officer said. But he had no other details to offer, nothing about how the fighting came about or what Sgt. Jacob Butler was doing when he was killed. For the grieving father, it wasn’t enough. The question of how Jake died gripped him in the days after, in part because he’d
made an unusual promise before his son left: If you are killed, I will go and stand where you fell. So Butler made a simple request to the Army: for Jake’s casualty report. Rules require one when soldiers are killed in a war zone. Unit commanders are supposed to create and maintain them, along with
Santa & lights
At the fire station, holiday comes with all the feasting — and maybe an emergency By Matt Erickson merickson@ljworld.com
In the living room, children play on the floor while their parents sit in armchairs, dinner plates in their laps, watching football on TV. Around the corner in the kitchen, other parents and kids sit around a dinner table, a full
Thanksgiving spread sitting on the counter nearby. It could have been a scene from any number of family Thanksgiving gatherings Thursday. But this one was happening at Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Station No. 5, where the 10 firefighters and paramedics on duty invited their families in for their own
Classified Comics Deaths Dilbert
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Today’s forecast, page 10A
Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo
Please see STATION, page 2A
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Thanksgiving dinner. “We always say that this is our second family,” Lt. Aaron Flory said, and on holidays like this, it gathers together just like any other family unit. After all, these men spend about onethird of their lives together in this station.
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Kick-starting a comic
PERSONNEL at Lawrence Fire Station No. 5, 1911 Stewart Ave., gather with family members for a Thanksgiving meal Thursday afternoon. Station members, from left at center, are John Darling, Matt Dohrn and Zane Morgan.
Vol.154/No.328 34 pages
A local writers’ group needs $18,500 to print and distribute “The Ninth Life of Solomon Gunn,” and on Dec. 10 they’ll begin seeking that funding through Kickstarter. Page 3A
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