CINCINNATI (AP) – Some people look surprised and tell him they just can’t believe it’s been 10 years already. For Keith Wightman, time hasn’t passed quickly at all.
It ticks by slowly as he thinks every day of the loss of his only son – gazing at the spruce tree planted a decade ago in his yard and now marked with a cross, plaque and spotlight. He’s seen his son’s high school friends and former teammates start careers and families while he daydreams about what might have been for Lance Corporal Brett Wightman, whose future was blown away with those of 10 other members of Columbus-based Lima Company on Aug. 3, 2005.
“I’m going to tell you, he would have been somebody,” Wightman said. “He had a great spirit. He was one of the good kids.”
Wightman promised that his dead son wouldn’t be forgotten, a pledge that other families of the lost members of Lima Company have also taken to heart, establishing scholarship programs, foundations and other benefits to help others in the names of the young men – sons, brothers, husbands, fathers – lost that summer. Two memorial events are scheduled for this month for the 23 people Lima Company lost over a 5-month period of 2005.
Aug. 3 was the company’s darkest day.