FORKS — It was a hero’s homecoming, staged in the silence of sadness.
Thursday, hundreds of people lined the streets of Forks to wave flags, yellow ribbons and posters.
All were quiet, as they watched the hearse carrying the body of Marine Lance Cpl. Jason Hanson pass by on its way to burial in the Forks Cemetery, the final leg of his long journey home from Iraq.
Hanson, 21, who grew up in Forks and joined the Marine Corps last year, was laid to rest with a 21-gun salute by a U.S. Marine Corps honor guard and a rendition of taps played by a bugler from Forks.
Hanson’s parents, Stephen and Carol Hanson, and his wife, Maria Farias, were presented with folded American flags, one of which had draped Hanson’s coffin the entire journey home.
Hanson was killed during combat operations on July 29 in Anbar province, Iraq.
He was the second serviceman from the North Olympic Peninsula to be killed in the Iraq war.
Community salutes Hanson
“Words just can’t express how amazing a community this is,” Forks Mayor Nedra Reed said while awaiting the arrival of Hanson’s body at Forks Cemetery on Thursday.
Reed received reports earlier in the day that people had lined the 60 miles of U.S. Highway 101 between Port Angeles and Forks to salute the military motorcade transporting Hanson’s body.
Earlier in the week, another military motorcade, which was also greeted with the same kind of crowd, transported Hanson’s body from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to Harper-Ridgeview Funeral Chapel in Port Angeles.
By the time Hanson’s body arrived in Forks, Reed was joined by about 100 members of the community, and representatives of different branches of the armed services.
All watched the motorcade pull into the cemetery.
First in the motorcade was the Forks Old-Fashioned Fourth of July “Freedom Float” carrying a banner that read, “Welcome home Jason, our hero.”