“He was the meaning of joy,” said John Nordmeyer, an uncle.

There are a bunch of middle aged men across the nation who tonight sit quietly in their living rooms. The TV set might be off.

They didn’t want to eat much tonight.

Many are at their laptops now, silently tap tap tapping out messages to reach out to others. To try to find some, something. Words would help. But, maybe accurate words would actually hurt.

When my husband heard the news at work, he’d immediately sent me an email. The email header said something this rough gruff guy never says. The subject line read: Please pray with me. His email ended, “I’m so sad for them I can’t even talk about this.” I called him right away. He said in that semi-strangled voice that men use when they feel everything and yet numb all at the same time: “Baby we lost four of our boys.”

I had heard; a call had come from a post-trauma colleague just before who was 20 miles outside Little Sioux camp. It’s bad, my friend said. It’s bad. More than half injured bad. 4 dead.

My husband is a scout master, has just raised by hand along with other hardworking scoutmasters an entire litter of little guys for the last many years. They just crossed over from cub scouts to boy scouts three months ago.

I go to banquets with long tables covered with paper tablecloths and eat baked beans and barbeque and soggy corn. I sit through the many awards and beadings and orders conferred on grown men (and women) of every age and condition …those who give huge amounts of their lives weeknights and weekends to teach wood lathing, survival skills, soup kitchen hash slinging, cooking, sewing, finances, stalwartness, honor and manners to a bunch of darling fissioning young scamps.

Then one day, it all comes together. The young scouts line up and their shirts are not sloppy at the belt line anymore, their ties are on straight instead of flying sideways They carry on a conversation that has content instead of giggling like squirrels, they pray together and mean it, play together and achieve together, and mean it.

There are some who critique the Boy Scouts for various reasons, but tonight, with two dead boys aged a mere 13, and the other two dead boys having merely 14 years on this earth… that they are gone after a fierce tornado hit a special Boy Scout camp, a camp called to rendezvous under the banner of Leadership… well, in the Scouts, even though people don’t know each other when they live hundreds and thousands of miles apart, they know each other. They do. Brothers by different mothers. Siempre.

Details about the four boys lives follow here…
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