Shoulder to shoulder, they came to say goodbye to Tate Myre
They stood shoulder to shoulder, linked in grief.
Several hundred people crammed into the lobby at Kensington Church in Lake Orion on Tuesday afternoon, forming a path for the casket after Tate Myre’s funeral.
“We lined the halls of this church and they wheeled the coffin by everybody,” JR Lafnear, the Oxford bowling coach and football PA announcer said hours later in a telephone interview. “It was very touching. It was a great way to close it out.”
Some of the children in the crowd were the students who ran out of Oxford High School on Nov. 30, sprinting for their lives, when an alleged 15-year-old shooter started firing down the hallways.
Others locked themselves in classrooms as they had been trained, and then called their parents or texted them "I love you" as the shooting was still going on.
Some of the adults in the crowd were the parents who raced to the Meijer and searched for their children at the staging area, hoping, praying to find them.
This entire community was wounded that day. Everybody is traumatized, even as they grieve.
And now, they waited for the pallbearers to push the casket through the crowd.
They were doing the unthinkable — burying a child. Myre, 16, died on the way to the hospital.
As the crowd waited for the casket, Myre's voice appeared over the speakers. It was from an interview he had done after one of his football games.
“Everything about us is tough,” Myre said after that game. “We didn’t quit. We came back. We grinded, worked every day. We trust each other. We all love each other.”
Maybe, those are the words this community needs now.
A road map out of this unspeakable pain.
Trust each other. Love each other. Keep grinding.
A musician played a bagpipe as the casket was pushed through the crowd. It was taken outside and lifted into a hearse on a cold, gray December afternoon, as friends hugged and parents wept.
“I looked at Tate as a very typical American young man who was raised with faith and had God-given athletic ability,” Lafnear said. “He was humble. He wasn't one of those cocky athletes. He was very humble, respectful."
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'Whole community is grieving'
The media was not allowed to attend the funeral.
I went not as a journalist but as a friend. Because I feel so close to this story.
My kids have played against Oxford for years. On the same field as Tate. In the same conference.
I have several friends in Oxford. And when I talk to them, I get this unmistakable feeling that this could be anyone’s child.
This is all our child.
One of my close family friends since kindergarten lives in Oxford and coached Tate in youth football. When I heard about the shooting, I called him afraid for his kids, and he described how his son locked a classroom door and clung to a wall as he called his mother to tell her that he loved her as the shooting was going on.
As we were talking, just hours after the shooting, my friend said that he had just learned about Tate’s death. His voice cracked.
What do you say to a friend like that?
I had tears streaming down my face.
They are all victims of terror.
Victims of evil.
After talking to several of Tate’s coaches and friends, I feel as if I know him. And I went to the funeral to pay my respects not just to Tate but this entire community and support my friend. In this column, I am not quoting anyone who gave speeches at the funeral out of respect for the family and I certainly did not interview anyone at the church.
I was not a journalist today at the church. I was an active participant in this funeral. I stood in that hallway, pressed shoulder to shoulder with everybody else, wiping tears from my eyes with a lump in my throat.
“The whole community is grieving,” Lafnear said, in the phone call. “I mean, we lost four young people. They were all good students, all good kids. And they were all Oxford-type kids. Didn’t get into much trouble. Did well in school. And the entire community is grieving.”
But Lafnear drew inspiration from the words of Tate’s father, Buck Myre.
“His dad stood up and said, 'OK, the time now is to stop grieving. Tate would not want us to sit here and cry for weeks and weeks. Let's get it done. Let's get to work. Let's move forward,'" Lafnear said. "And he looked right at the football players and the wrestlers coming up and said, 'Get to work.’
“He had a great message. If you see somebody you admire, pick out one of their characteristics and try to emulate it. And that was the message that Buck gave to the football team and the wrestling team in a private ceremony. If you liked that Tate had a sense of humor, then emulate that. That's how Tate can live forever, if you pick a trait of his and emulate it and live your life that way.”
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Coach knew both teenagers
As the bowling coach, Lafnear is in a strange position.
He coached Justin Shilling, 17, one of the victims who will be buried on Thursday.
But he also coached Ethan Crumbley, 15, who is charged with the shooting.
Crumbley bowled in middle school and as a freshman, although he didn’t make the travel squad. He was on the developmental team.
“I have both sides of the pendulum, if you will,” Lafnear said.
“What was Ethan like?” I asked.
“I've avoided trying to get into those discussions because I didn't know him extremely well,” Lafnear said. “But he was no different than any other 13- or 14-year-old kid that we've had in the program. There was nothing that stuck out. He wasn't overly talented at bowling, but he was learning.”
Now, the grieving continues, as this community braces for another funeral.
“We just have to get through Thursday and get the well train going," Lafnear said. “The community was shaken to its bones by evil coming into the town and shooting it up and then scaring the crap out of everybody. As the bowling coach, I still have kids that tell me, 'Coach, I love being here bowling but I never want to go to school.' It's gonna take months for that to go away.”
The thing that I will take away is Tate’s own words:
Trust each other. Love each other. Keep grinding.
That’s Oxford Strong.
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff. To read his recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.