When Kathleen Hanley sits on her red folding chair among the rows of graves that stand tall in freshly manicured green grass at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Cecil, she doesn’t notice the sounds of cars rushing by on the highway or the funeral processions driving through.
She’s focused on the name engraved in the white marble: Sgt. Ryan H. Lane of the U.S. Marine Corps, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2009 when he was 25.
“I’ve read that headstone a million times,” said Hanley, of Baldwin, on a recent Friday afternoon as she sat in the chair at the crest of a hill, wiping away tears. “I still can’t believe what I am seeing.”
The name forever etched on the headstone belongs to her only biological son, the child who always told her before he was to be deployed for the Marines, “Mom, don’t worry” and “If not me, Mom, then who?” words from the late Marine Travis Manion, when his family asked him why had had go back to war.
Those words echo in Hanley’s mind from her soldier, who was willing to give up his life for his country. A soldier who won’t be here to hug his mother on Mother’s Day.