LoudounNow LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 2, No. 33 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
Heat’s On! Your guide to grilling season
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[ June 22 – 28, 2017 ]
Renss Greene/Loudoun Now
From left, chaplains Gary Myers, Dan Duis, Carol Kost, Charlie Grant, Denava Davis, Peggie Drost, Leo Flynn, and Patty Cornwell at Ashburn Fire Station 6. The program started 38 years ago with just Grant, and now has 22 chaplains volunteering with six more in training.
Second Responders
The Heart-Wrenching Work of Loudoun’s Chaplains
BY KARA C. RODRIGUEZ
T
he memories for long-time chaplain Gary Myers are vivid. The too many suicides, including on Valentine’s Day 2006, the same day Myers buried his wife “who wanted to live.” The tragic accidents. There was the man who was talking to his wife on a cell phone on his way home from work when he was struck by a large truck and killed instantly. His wife had wondered why the call had been disconnected. She found out when Myers joined a State Police trooper at her home for the death notification. “They had just sold their house,” Myers recalled. “The movers were coming the next day to move them to another state to be by their kids and grandkids.”
Fellow chaplain Carol Kost also has her share of stories. A chaplain with the Ashburn Volunteer Fire-Rescue Department, Kost said she wonders whether she’s getting more out of her role as a chaplain than those she’s serving. One instance sticks out. She was called to the scene where an elderly man had died, not unexpectedly. She arrived after the emergency medical personnel and encountered three generations of the man’s family, including his widow. “We all end up sitting around in this beautiful circle, and we did the wake right there. They told stories, we laughed, we cried. I felt an incredible witness to this beautiful life,” she recalled. Just a couple years later, when that widow died, the family encountered another chaplain and told them about their memories of their encounter with Kost and
ECRWSS Postal Customer June 30,
how grateful they were for her presence on that day. “That’s where you get this ministry of presence,” she said. “Sometimes you never even pray and it’s just to be present. Sometimes that’s all you do is just be there.”
Helping Through Crisis And Loudoun’s chaplains have “been there”—whether it be at the scene of an accident, delivering the unwelcomed news to a family that their loved one has died, or ministering to the county’s many law enforcement and fire-rescue personnel—since 1979. That’s the year that Pastor Charlie Grant, who still responds to fire-rescue calls, was asked to join the newly elected sheriff, Don Lacy, as the department CHAPLAINS >> 25
Community Rallies Around Mosque After Teen is Fatally Beaten BY NORMAN K. STYER The brutal killing of a Reston teen who was observing Ramadan with family and friends at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society center in Sterling has sparked renewed calls for unity and tolerance across the region. According to Fairfax County Police, Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old sophomore at South Lakes High School in Fairfax, was walking with friends along Dranesville Road on Loudoun’s eastern boundary early Sunday morning when there was an altercation with a passing motorist. The driver ran his car on to the sidewalk, got out and, wielding a baseball bat, chased and threatened the teens. As others ran, Hassanen was left behind. The teens, who had taken a TEEN MURDER >> 42
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