America: 50☆Stars (Vol. 3)

Episode 24: Friends of Dorothy

Warning: This episode features the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC)—an organization known for hate speech toward various groups of people such as the LGBTQI+ community. Some of the dialogue shown in this story will reflect the WBC's views. It can be triggering for some readers. In which case, I completely understand anyone unable to read this story. Just know the WBC and its bigotry are portrayed negatively. You've been warned.

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Albert Snyder had only one son to call his own. His name was Matthew or Matt for short. He was born and baptized in 1985 as the second child of the family. As far as the father could recall, Matt grew up happily like any typical American boy living in the suburbs of Maryland.

Matt loved to be active. He played baseball, basketball, and soccer. He liked to swim in the swimming pool, and he liked to play football with his cousins in the yard. Games were always fun for him. On trips to the beach, he liked to fish and body surf. On trips to the woods, he liked to walk along hiking trails. He even took joy in the simple things like rolling down hills with the younger kids without regard for his age. He was always brimming with life.

Matt also had a fondness for hobbies that didn't involve being active in sports and the outdoors. One of the first things to come to mind was his collection. He liked to collect arrowheads, precious stones, and baseball memorabilia; they remained neat in his bedroom to this day. Aside from collecting objects, Matt also had an interest in arts and crafts. He was quite talented. He could sketch drawings in black ink and shape clay into pottery figures. Probably his greatest gift was photography. Since his teen years, he always brought along a camera, continuing to do so after enlisting for the U.S. Marines. One of his dreams was to go to Australia and be a photographer. He could've taken some spectacular photos...

... Matt should be remembered as a good person. He had an exuberant personality. He liked to tell jokes and ghost stories. They were dumb and silly. Still, he would laugh to the point of tears with a genuine grin on his rosy face. He might've grown on the smaller side compared to other boys, yet that didn't deter his confidence. He was strong and responsible in his own right, unafraid to stand up for the weak. He was a great friend. Rather than brag, he remained humble, quietly thanking everyone for their wonderful wishes before he left for Iraq in February 2006—the month before the accident...

... Lance Corporal Matt was positioned in the gunnery when the humvee en route to another camp overturned in a freak non-combat-related accident. He was twenty years old when he died on the third of March 2006. Five days later, he returned to Maryland in a white casket draped in the American flag.

"Fuck you, George Bush and Dick Cheney!" Albert Snyder shouted, his body shaken to the core as tears streamed down his face. He was the first member of the family to be informed in the living room of his home in Pennsylvania. His next immediate concern was his ex-wife and his two daughters still living in Maryland. He called Sarah, his 22-year-old daughter, to go to her mother's house; he didn't want his ex-wife to be alone when she got the news. Though he didn't outright tell her what happened to her brother, Sarah was quick to understand the seriousness of the matter and calmly did what she was asked to do. Tracie, his 18-year-old daughter, reacted the complete opposite. She was working at a restaurant as a waitress, refusing to leave work until she was given a valid explanation. Al had no choice. He helplessly listened to her sorrowful screams disturb the restaurant—feeling incredibly sorry for her and her older sister. It was the hardest thing for him to tell—the sisters lost their brother as well as their best friend.

News of Matt's death left his family in dismay. There were so many questions on their minds: 'How could this happen? Why him? Was there any way his death could've been avoided?' The only answer they understood was war. Even though he wasn't engaged in combat, Matthew Snyder still fell to the unpredictable factors that came with fighting in a foreign land. It seemed pointless. It didn't make any sense. It sounded like a cruel lie, but that was the truth of this tragedy.