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Posted on Thu, Dec. 11, 2008

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FOR ALEX: FIFTH OF SEVEN PARTS

Alex's family meets Bush during 2007 Wichita trip

BY ROY WENZL

The Wichita Eagle

Sgt. Charles Austin Hilt picked up the surviving Funcheons in a blue government van at 1:30 p.m., while the president lunched and cracked jokes at a fundraiser for Sen. Pat Roberts.

Bob Funcheon had called Hilt the night before and told him, "You're going with us." The sergeant objected; this meeting should be for them only, Hilt said. Bob had a high regard for Hilt, who had helped them arrange Alex's funeral. He repeated: "You're going." Hilt was dressed now in a smart-looking beret and Class A dress uniform.

The president, staffers said, would meet with them in a small office in a hangar at Boeing's manufacturing plant in southeast Wichita.

Bob had been irritated at President Bush for not calling them weeks before. But he still thought Bush's war was the right thing to do.

Gloria, who disagreed, listened to her Dad think out loud. Bob looked at her. "You do realize," Bob told his daughter, "they have the Secret Service right there."

He was teasing. Gloria looked away.

When her parents had told her that the president would meet with them, she'd blurted out, "I'm not going." She thought Bush had sent her brother to his death.

Karen tried reason. "You really should go."

Gloria finally agreed. "I'll never get a chance to do something like this ever again." But the "something" she had in mind had nothing to do with the novelty of meeting a world leader.

Bob looked at her now.

"You can say anything you want," he said.

"But you have to be polite," Karen said. "You can't say anything mean."

"Well," Gloria said. "I guess I can promise you that I don't want to say anything that will put me in Guantanamo."

Bob smiled.

Karen's cell phone rang. It was a woman from Boeing.

"She says there's been a change of plan, and that they will take us to some airplane to meet him instead," Karen said, puzzled.

"What airplane, I wonder?"

Gloria grinned.

"Air Force One," she said.

• • • 

The van took them around a corner, and Bob caught his breath again. There was Air Force One, "looking huge and blue and magnificent," as Bob said later, gleaming in the clear midday sunlight.

They pulled up to the nose. Bob's pulse beat faster. They got out, and five black-jacketed Secret Service agents told them in crisp, polite tones that they had to run wands over them, checking for weapons. Karen, worried, told them she was carrying metal.

"It's my son's dog tags," she said. The agents allowed them.

They turned to the steps.

"My God," Bob thought. "This is really going to happen."

What happened next seemed surreal. Air Force One's chief steward gave them a tour of the plane, including the president's private office; they all got to sit in Bush's desk chair.

Air Force officers on board, seeing Hilt's Army uniform, looked him up and down and asked "Are you lost?" Hilt opened a drawer in Bush's desk, and found a humidor with a half-smoked presidential cigar.

"Is it Cuban?" Bob asked.

Hilt looked. "No," he said.

A Secret Service agent said the president had arrived outside. He told Hilt, politely, to get out.

And then it was time.

• • • 

Bush bounded up the airplane's steps and came into his office quickly, as though still bounding. Bob was startled to see that Bush looked exhausted; Bush did not tell them about the head cold. Bob, a longtime salesman, noticed Bush shook hands straight up and down. Some men rudely turn the other man's hand palm-up. Not Bush.

"Mr. President, I'm Bob Funcheon."

Bush let go of Bob's hand, shook Karen's and kissed her on the cheek; then shook hands with Gloria and kissed her on the cheek. He motioned them to the couch; he sat down not at the desk but in the chair in front of the desk, "Laura's chair," the steward had called it. Bush's left knee was inches from Gloria's knees as she sat facing him. Bush leaned forward, elbows on knees; Gloria thought that if she did the same, the two of them would touch foreheads.

I'm sorry for the loss of your son, Bush said. And this is the reason I sent him over there:

I sent him because we have to stop them, we have to stop them over there and keep them from coming over here, Bush said. We need to be over there because Iraq needs to get a stable and democratic form of government going over there. The form of government they end up with is very important to us.

Karen, who liked Bush, was not impressed. It's the same stuff you hear on the news, she thought. Then she saw Bush watching Gloria with a look of bemusement. The girl was taking a blank sheet of paper out of a pocket and folding it into quarters. She took out a pen.

So Gloria, Bush said in a quiet tone. Tell me about your brother.

"He was a troublemaker," Gloria said.

A silence followed; Bush seemed to be caught off guard. He smiled, chuckled, and looked at Bob as Gloria looked at Bush with a steady gaze.

"Alex had had a few problems and had gotten into a little trouble like a lot of guys that age do," Bob said. "He got into the military for the same reasons a lot of other guys do. But then in the Army Alex had begun to grow and mature, had been promoted to sergeant in only three years in the army, and at the age of only 21."

Bush nodded. He turned to Gloria again.

What are you, 16, right?

"Eighteen," she corrected him.

Where do you go to school?

"I'm enrolling in Kansas State University."

Good school, Bush said.

"I also got accepted into American University in Washington," Gloria said, an edge to her voice. "But I'm going to KSU."

Bush glanced at her parents, and appeared to sense (correctly) that American University was where Gloria had wanted to go, and that someone (Karen) had pushed for K-State.

Nah, Bush said. Kansas State is a better school.

Everyone smiled.

What do you want to major in?

"History."

Really! I majored in history too. (Bush received a degree in history at Yale in 1968.)

He smiled.

Bob interrupted, and began reciting what he'd rehearsed for days.

"Mr. President, we came to see you here because there are a couple of things I wanted to say to you."

Bush leaned back, listening.

"Karen and I support you, and we support what you are doing in Iraq... although, I should tell you, our daughter Gloria does not."

Bush looked at Gloria and nodded. Well, OK... but she's entitled to her opinion, Bush said.

He looked at Gloria and started to say more, but Bob interrupted. Bush sat back, listening.

"This is what I wanted to say," Bob said: "When my dad came back from World War II, he had been shot three times, and he had had some psychological problems, but he was honored when he came back and he felt like the sacrifice he had made had been worth something. But then when my brother came home from Vietnam, it wasn't like that at all.

"When my son was killed, he came back, and he was honored at his funeral. But I began to resign myself to the idea that his life had meant something to us and to his buddies... but I felt like his death meant nothing in the war on terrorism."

"But then after we went to my son's memorial service at Fort Carson, and I met several other wounded soldiers... as if his death wasn't enough, there were these guys out there, maimed and hurt, and this upset me nearly as much as Alex's death.

"So I decided to come talk to you... and tell you... that when you get down and discouraged... when you get down about this, I want you to think of my son, and those guys. And I want you to reach down deep and discover and do what needs to be done in this war, so that those guys, 20 or 30 years from now, will be able to look back and think that everything they had gone through and sacrificed, that it was WORTH it."

Bob paused for a moment, startled at how it had all come out. He was lecturing the president of the United States.

Bush listened. Bob wondered: Have I gone too far?

"We support you," Bob said. "And we are here to encourage you."

This surprised Bush.

Well, wait a minute, Bush said. I should be encouraging you, and here you are encouraging me.

He peered at Bob.

You don't sound bitter, the president said. Are you?

Coming Friday: Gloria asks the president a few questions.