A Fallen Trooper and the Hope of Service
For the past several days I’ve watched a rare and magical thing happen in a small, rural Central Illinois community. After the tragic death of State Trooper Ryan Albin on June 28th, his family, friends and complete strangers put their lives on hold to comfort one another, remember his life through stories and honor his service to the people of Illinois.
That this is rare is a sad commentary on our nation. But that it still happens is a testament to the roots that run deep in the communities of our nation and gives me hope that we can indeed come together when it matters most.
My wife Jen grew up with Ryan. In the tiny town of Bellflower, Illinois, that means a lot. He and his twin sister Raeanne, my wife and a handful of other kids started preschool together. And in a place like this, that means you stick together all the way through high school, which they did. They are a special group. They’ve been so successful in all their own unique ways. Some have gone on to jobs and lives in other states. Some have stayed and planted deeper roots. But they never lost touch completely. Watching them come together again to remember and celebrate Ryan it was evident how their lives are truly intertwined in ways that have shaped them all.
In the 21st century, our notion of friendship and community has become conditional and selective. We think we get to choose our friends and our community and stay friends and live near people as long as it works for us. Of course it’s a wonderful thing to have the freedom — both actual and economic — to choose where we live and choose our friends. But it’s another thing entirely to make this self-centered view of freedom the central tenet of our existence. It ultimately becomes very shallow and leads to loneliness. I hear stories and talk to folks all the time who, when tragedy or hardship hits, feel all alone because they’ve built their world around themselves and they simply have no one who really gets them and is there for them in the hardest of times.
Not in Bellflower. Not this week.
People literally dropped everything to help in any way they could. Time just sort of took on a different meaning. Sure, life had to go on. Fourth of July celebrations needed to take place. Jobs, for some, needed to be done. But priorities were re-straightened-out. If there was a task needing done to serve the Albin family, it was done. People who didn’t even know Ryan placed flags along the road to honor the procession. Church ladies cooked potato casseroles and baked beans. Volunteer firefighters fueled trucks and blocked off intersections and stood at attention as the fallen passed by. Friends drove from all over the country to be there. All this taking place around a holiday and on weekdays when they normally would have been working or doing something that on any other day would have seemed important. But on days like these, a community comes together.
For my part, I had clients wanting my attention or needing things from me but I just let it slide. I needed to play my small part of supporting my wife, ensuring she got to spend plenty of time with her lifelong friends and paying my respects in whatever ways I could. Sometimes that meant just sitting in a lawn chair in a circle of friends remembering Ryan. I saw this happening all over town in many little circles just like ours. In small towns like Bellflower, an event like this becomes the “talk of the town.” And in this case, it was an echo of reverence, honor and laughter.
You see, Ryan was known for his booming, truly unique laugh. One I got to hear many times over the years and will never forget. It was the sort of combination between a good belly laugh and a donkey hee-hawing at you that was truly contagious.
Just a few nights before his accident he sat around my father-in-law’s fire pit — a fixture of the community that may have guitar music, beer and laughter on any given night. They laughed late into the night and worried they’d wake the neighbors. Even if they had, they would’ve gotten a pass because everyone knew it was Ryan, and Ryan got a pass.
At the funeral, hundreds stood outside the high school in Farmer City awaiting the solemn march of the casket to the hearse. It was a blazing hot Illinois summer day. Troopers and law enforcement from all over the country stood at attention in their dress uniforms. Friends, family and neighbors waited quietly. The Governor had been at the funeral to pay his respects. The state police director was there. So many had stopped what they were doing to honor this fallen trooper. So many were enduring discomfort there in the searing heat, setting aside multiple days for all the ceremony. Why?
I know that at least in part it is because we innately understand the tremendous honor due to anyone who gives themselves to a career that is, by definition, about serving others before yourself. About putting your own life on the line every day to ensure others are safe.
It was also because Ryan was so special. Everyone who met him knew it. What else could we possibly do on that day but give him every bit of honor and respect we could muster. And so I, like so many, gladly stood silent in the blazing sun. When the bagpipes played I heard the echo of the director’s words — “Trooper #5718, your watch has ended.”
As the flurry of activity surrounding Ryan’s passing begins to quiet, I find myself asking what we can learn from an event like this. In times like these we grasp for answers that rarely come. One thing we can be encouraged by is the ways in which death can sharpen our vision, strengthen our resolve, renew our passion and remind us of what truly matters. Ryan’s tragic death has already brought so much good.
Lifelong friends, scattered about the country but still ever-so-close have come back together and spent precious time with one another. Troopers wives will hug them a little tighter and cherish their time just a little more. People remember the respect due our law enforcement officers, even when we don’t agree with them. And a community put aside its many differences, old grudges, broken relationships, fractured politics and busy lives for a few days. We stopped and came together and remembered what really matters.
So while our nation’s politics simmer in outrage and as so many, myself included, fight to find the right way forward, I have a renewed hope. But it’s not from any politician or political movement. It’s not from any economic plan or healthcare fix. Here in Illinois it’s certainly not from a stable and secure state budget. No, the hope I see is in the simplest and most profound of human gestures. It’s the hope that comes when we, like Ryan, lay aside our own self preservation and look instead to the good of those around us, finding ways, any way we can, to serve.
Thank you Ryan, for the example you set and the legacy you will leave.
RIP Trooper Albin.
