Spell the names right and say something nice
July 9th, 2008, 9:25 am · Post a Comment · posted by Aaron
A year ago today, the Desert Dispatch learned that Petty Officer First Class Steven Phillip Daugherty, a Barstow High grad, had been killed in Iraq. Below are my memories of that day.
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I came into work that Tuesday morning knowing there would be a message on my phone that would either make or break my day.
On July 6, Petty Officer First Class Steven Phillip Daugherty, a code breaker assigned to a Navy Seal group operating in Iraq was killed. Daugherty grew up in Barstow, Calif., graduated from Barstow High School in 1997. He planned to come home for his 10-year class reunion scheduled in August and to see his mother and father. He had a wife and a little boy who lived in Washington. The nature of his work kept the details of his death secretive. He was 28, and the first local casualty from the Iraq war I had to write about as a reporter for the Desert Dispatch, Barstow’s daily newspaper.
At the time, an easel stood in the corner of our news room with a large memo pad on it. Written on the pad was a list of potential big stories that the reporters had to be prepared to cover – wild fires, flash floods, city officials resigning, police officers shot in the line of duty, a local politician elected to national office, the announcement that an Indian gaming casino was coming to Barstow and the death of a local soldier in Iraq. We had to develop a plan to cover these stories effectively. Who would we call? What reporting could we do ahead of time? How would we organize the story? Web version? Print version? Graphics? Photos?
As the paper’s military reporter, the eventual Iraq death of a soldier from Barstow was my story. A few weeks before Daugherty’s death, a soldier from Grand Rapids, Mich., near where I grew up, was killed. I read the stories in the Grand Rapids Press and took notes. They called the soldier’s family, talked to teachers from his high school, city officials and military personnel. I made my own list.
I found out about Daugherty’s death on July 9, the following Monday. I put the story I planned to file that day on hold as well as a phone call to my sister. It was her birthday. I forgot the plan I made and just started to react. The first story, posted online that morning, came straight from the Naval press release.
“Daugherty, 28, a cryptologic technician, was killed by an improvised explosive device while supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom,” I wrote.
I did not know what a cryptologic technician did. Later that morning, a sailor at his base in Virginia Beach, Va. filled in the details. The Daughertys listed in Barstow’s phone book were not related to the sailor. Some, if the conversation went that far, said how sorry they were to hear about his death. One man said he was proud to share his last name. Someone gave me the number of another Daugherty not listed in the phone book. Someone in the newsroom thought she had a son in the Navy.
I waited to make the call.
I write about deaths frequently, among other topics during my daily grind. I cover court trials, graduations, environmental clean-up programs, the heat during desert summers and new literacy programs for teens at the county library. I break down municipal ordinances, peg facts to trends and make sure those who work for us actually work for us. I am a daily source for the news, but the one time my words mean something rather than just inform is when I memorialize someone’s life in death on the front page of the paper.
The act of dying does not entitle someone to an elegant eulogy; nor does it guarantee column inches in the local paper. Some deaths do make headlines, and then there are formulas: the friends and family portrait of a homicide victim, the retrospective of a local celebrity who passes, and the somber culmination of life and duty for those who served – he was a soldier and father; she was a police officer and a mother. The reporter takes the formula and uses it to create a lasting memory. The death grabs the readers, and now the journalist has the final say on the departed.
Meanwhile, the family just hopes you spell the names right and say something nice.
Mrs. Daugherty asked me to do that when I finally made the call that afternoon. She begged me not to politicize Steven’s death to make commentary on the war, not to say anything that would jeopardize the safety of his fellow sailors – Steven wouldn’t want that, ever, she said – to say how much Steven liked being a sailor and how proud his family was of him.
“He loved the Navy. He loved everything about it. He was just proud to do his job,” she said.
She passed the phone around the room, brothers and a sister made similar pleas. I assured each that this was not about the war but about Steven. They continued sharing. His story, at least the version I would put on the front page, began to weave together. An honor roll student who wanted to join the Air Force. A community college graduate who enlisted in the Navy to see the world.
“And he did,” his mother added.
A cryptologic technician, an enabler according to people from his base, who provided critical intelligence to the Navy’s finest, the Seals. A musician, a son, a brother, a husband and a father.
I tried I captured it all, but I did not. You never do. The task of capturing a life through phone calls, past photographs, press releases and about 20 inches is admirable, formidable and impossible. I just hoped I spelled the names right and said something nice, something meaningful.
I had two messages on my machine when I came into the office the day the story ran. Steven’s sister called to thank me for the article. The family read it and were proud of Steven, she said.
Steven’s wife called too. I could not reach her for the article; this was the first time I heard from her. She asked me to send two copies of the article to her in Washington. One for the family’s refrigerator and one to put in Steven’s 5-year-old son’s scrap book.
“So he can remember his father,” she said.
Aaron Aupperlee | city editor
