USA Today: Comrades, civilians bid soldier Maupin farewell

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-04-27-maupin-funeral_N.htm

By Barrett J. Brunsman and Howard Wilkinson, Cincinnati Enquirer
UNION TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Staff Sgt. Matt Maupin's long road home ended Saturday in a blaze of yellow ribbons, the silent tribute of people who lined the roads, and the respect of thousands more who filed past his coffin at a public visitation.


Army Staff Sgt. Keith M. Maupin
AP

It was not the kind of homecoming that people here and across the country had prayed for, where the young soldier would somehow evade death at the hands of his captors and return standing tall and strong.

Instead, it was a solemn and respectful homecoming, witnessed by thousands who stood in light rain for hours early Saturday. The procession led the soldier's hearse past some of the landmarks of his Union Township youth and to the Union Township Civic Center, where hundreds stood in line for what was to be a 20-hour visitation.


By Joseph Fuqua II, Cincinnati Enquirer


By 2 p.m. Saturday — three hours into the scheduled 20-hour visitation — about 3,000 people had streamed into the Civic Center to pay their respects, where they passed by the fallen soldier's flag-draped casket. Looking down on the casket was a large, framed photograph of the Army reservist and at the foot of the casket were the symbols of his service in Iraq — a pair of Army boots, a down-turned rifle, a Kevlar helmet and a set of Army dog tags.

"If four people showed up, that's OK with me," said Keith Maupin, the soldier's father, as he took a mid-afternoon break outside the Civic Center, where many came up to him to shake his hand or give him a hug.

But the crowds that did show up, Keith Maupin said, were "great. A lot of community support."

The first to file past the casket in the Civic Center gymnasium were about 70 members of Maupin's unit, the 724th Transportation Co., an Army Reserve unit based in Bartonville, Ill. Some of them will serve as pallbearers for Sunday's funeral at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati and the private burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Montgomery.

FULL story at link.