Mourners try to 'find peace'
Cpl. Evan Marshall once told members of his church to accept pain and hardship in order to find peace - words that comforted mourners at Monday's funeral for the Athens soldier who was killed last week while serving in Iraq.
Marshall, 21, and four other American soldiers died Jan. 28 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle while on patrol in the city of Mosul.
More than 800 people attended Marshall's funeral at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Athens, where Marshall was an active member of the youth group as a teen.
Marshall would want his friends and loved ones to find peace with his death, pastor Glenn Doak said, according to a sermon Marshall himself wrote for the church's youth group while a senior at Cedar Shoals High School.
"Peace is accepting life as it is rather than how you think it should be or how you want it to be..." Marshall wrote. "When life takes a turn for the worse, simply accepting the pain you feel instead of wishing it was different can bring you peace. ... Although sometimes our lives seem to be filled with sadness, we can rest assured that God is waiting to pull us out from the darkness at the end of the tunnel."
Marshall's sermon provided comfort to former youth group director Kim Mansfield, who remembered Marshall as a loyal friend who loved to spend time with other kids at the church.
"He had a faith and a spirit deeper and bigger than I ever knew," Mansfield said. "He wrote those words of his sermon for us here today."
Marshall was a quiet deep thinker who seemed to mature when he joined the military after high school graduation in 2004, friends said.
He served in Iraq from December 2005 until December 2006 and was less than two months into his second tour last week. He was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star posthumously Monday and received a military funeral in Evergreen Memorial Park.
Several American flags flew outside the church, and more than 50 riders with the Patriot Guard, a group of motorcyclists who support fallen soldiers, escorted the funeral procession along with Athens-Clarke police.
Marshall's father, Andrew Marshall, is an Athens attorney and an active member at First Presbyterian, where he sings in the choir. Support from the church and across the community has helped sustain friends and family, he said.
"We've been touched by the outpouring of love and support from the church, family and the community at large and will always be grateful for that," Andrew Marshall said. "We wanted the service to honor Evan's sacrifice and be an expression of support for all the troops still in harm's way in the Middle East."
Marshall's decision to join the military came as a surprise to high school friends like Kevin Bradley, who said Marshall was never in ROTC or showed much interest in the military as a teenager. Marshall's friends are stunned by his death but proud of his service, Bradley said.
"I have a lot of respect for him," Bradley said. "Everyone's still kind of shocked by this, but more than anything, we're proud of what he did."
Several of Marshall's classmates shared stories over the Internet to remember him and deal with his death, classmate Holly Brightwell said.
Many of the stories revolve around snow skiing and trips with the church's youth group.
Beneath Marshall's shyness was a great sense of humor that would come out once he got to know you, said Joey Phillips, of Savannah, another of Marshall's former youth group directors. The youth group met once a week and spent a lot of time talking about God and playing video games, two of Marshall's favorite things to do, Phillips said.
"It took a little while to get to know him, but once you broke him out of his shell, he was one of the funniest guys we had," Phillips said.
As a close friend of the Marshall family, Patti Reed knew Marshall since he was a child and said she saw a definite change in him after he joined the Army.
"He really grew up," Reed said. "We saw him after basic training, and the physical change was incredible. He'd matured a lot, and he was much more focused."
Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 02/05/08
