OCR Text |
Show tr Heoee Sunday, August 28, 2005 DAILY ye“0 004 een’ > MREKALD Garrett's story Courtesy The Bardsley family after Garrett's dissapearance on top of WynaPicchuin Peru, Dec. 2004. “It’s been kindof a motto ofours that we needto lookfor the rainbows. As Heidi always says, how we handlethis is up to us.” Continued from A6 the changes comeanyeasier. “There's alway's one person who's notthere,” Courtney said. “It’s weird taking family pictures because there’s someone missing,” Heidi agreed. Garrett’s absence — and his presence — was noticeable on June 24 when Courtney and Kenyon Christen got married in the temple. Courtneysaid she felt her youngest brother's spirit in the room during the ceremony, and Heidi felt a sense of family that included her youngest son. But Kevin, despite the happy occasion,still missed Garrett “I yearned for him to be there,” he said, His friends Accepting Garrett’s death was difficult for his friends, too. Alex Trotter and Tanner Dunn said whenpeopletried totell them Garrett was dead, they'd respond with “Shut up. No,he’s not.” “I didn’treally believe them,” Alexsaid. “Yeah, | just thought they were wrong,” Tanner echoed. Reality sunk in the first day it snowed in Utah Valley. Both boys quietly accepted the truth. Wally said he hoped Garrett had diedthefirst night on the mountain; he didn’t want Garrett to be uptherealone, cold and scared. Knowing he wenttosleep that night and never woke up was a less horrible way to picture him. His friends changed too. Alex and Tanner said theyfelt a little bit of Garrett in them, a piece oftheir friend to keepalive. Wally said his relationship with Alex changed;they now havethis experienceto talk aboutthat both went throughandboth understand. Wally noticed the changes as soon as he got on the mountain the first day andhis usually non-affectionate son surprised him. “That was oneofthe first things he did was hug me, because he wanted to makesurethatI was there, that I was OK,”he said. Thetwoalso havecried together more than a few times since August. “I was one that never wanted to have anyonesee mecry, and nowI don’t care who sees me,” Wally said.“If somebody sees me,that’s just fine. If somebody wantsto pass the tissues, that'd be much appreciated.” Alexlearned the same lesson onthefirst day of school without Garrett. A sign on the middle schoolsaid, “Our prayers are with Garrett,” and Alex, not wantinghis friends to see him cry, blinked awaythe tears. Hesaid his father’ took him aside at Boy Scoutslater and told him crying was OK wheneverhe needed todoit. AnotherScout told his motherthat he cried himself to sleep every night forthefirst two weeks after Garrett got lost. Wally also has learned not to take tomorrow for granted. “You need to tell whomeverit is that you love them, because they might not be here tomorrow,”he said. The Scouts havepulled together withthe loss of one of their own, becoming a more cohesive unit and focusing on Scouting andlearning. All the boys and their parents arestill active and mytruck, and right about the time I turned it on was right about the time they foundhim,” ally said. He gathered the boys aroundfor the announcement;all were genuinely happy. But underneath the gladness they hurt. “It was almost like every boy looked at me andsaid, ‘But Brother Trotter, why didn’t we find Garrett? ” he said. “I didn’t have an answer.” Finding joy from the pain Because of Garrett, though, the Hawkins family was not left wondering the samething. Heidi, Kevin and Wally all say their missing boy played a big role in making sure anotherdidn't end up ike him. “We didn’t want them to haveto recreate the wheel,” Kevin said.“In our eyes, Garrett saved Brennan'slife because of the things that we've learned.” A dayortwo after Brennan disappeared, Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds called Kevin Bardsley,said he hada similar search under way and wanted to know if Kevin wanted to be involved. Kevin's decision had been madea long time ago. “That's the week my daughter got married,” Heidi said.“It was a busy week,but wecouldn't have kept him away.” Courtney actually shooed him out the door, saying she and Heidi could take care of wedding details. Kevin packed his trailer with food and water,loaded up his radios andglobal positioning systems and headed for the mountains. Edmunds said Kevin helped because he brought a lot of experience and volunteers with him,but also because he understood what the Hawkins wereexperiencing. He explained the process, calmed lot of their fears andtold them he truly understood what they were going through. Because ofthose searches,thereis now a core of experienced searchers andtechnical expertise ready to mobilize in the case of anotherlost child, ‘Wally said. Brennan was the first on the receiving endof it. “I would like to think Garrett was on the mountain the day Brennan was missing,” he said. The Garrett Bardsley Foundation Finding missing peopleis oneof the missions of the Garrett Bardsley Foundation, set up with funds donated after Garrett disappeared. The secondis to build schools in poor countries, a familytradition started in Christmas 2003. Heidisaid that Christmas,disillusioned with the commercialization of the holiday, the family wentto Mexico andbuilt a well and a medical clinic and bonded with the people. Last Christmas, the Bardsleys and several friends went to Ecuadorto build the first school. The money had come from numerous sources, including Garrett’s schoolfriends; students at Spanish Fork Middle Schoolraised $20,000 for the effort and collected more than 1,000 backpacksto send to schoolchildren. Thefirst few months of this year they continuedtheir efforts with the foundation,raising moneyfor a second school. Both Kevin and Heidi were wonderingif they should focus on camping. althoughnot entirely without qualms. “] think everybody was little bit nervous on just oneof the foundation’s purposes, and they wereleaning toward the schools, which helped our first campout after Garrett disappeared,” so many people in these poor areas. Wally said. “Wereally kind ofput a lot of emphasis on Acceptancedoesn’t stop the wondering, the schools — and that’s when Brennan went though, what went wrong, where Garrett was, missing,” Kevin said. why they couldn't find him. The boys were most vocal in June,in the middle of a 50-mile hike. Wally was onthis hike underprotest; he Healing wanted tobe in the Uintas searching for missing Boy Scout Brennan Hawkins. His bishop, howThe trips to Ecuador brought their own sadever, told him his first responsibility was to his ness; Heidi said Garrett had enjoyed them most. Scouts, and then he could search. Hewas surprisingly compassionate for a 12One of his rules on Boy Scout trips was no year-old boy andtruly understood the service radio; he wanted the boystotalk to each other. Thatrule was supposed tobe in effect that day. ty were doing, so doing it without him was “I don’t know what made medo it, but I vioBut his family found peace as well, sometimes lated my own rule and turned on the radio in in unexpected places. On New Year’s Day, the family climbed WynaPicchuin Peru, the mountain next to MacchuPicchu.Kevin, Heidi, Courtney and a family friend reachedthetopfirst. Oncethere,instead of appreciating the view, Kevin noticed the three women’s hair was standing straight up,indicatinga lightning storm,and thoughtthey'd better get off the mountain quickly. “All of a sudden wenoticed this rainbow forming,” he said. “It was the mostbrilliant rainbow you'd everseen.” Standing at the peak with hisfamily, looking down on rainbow forthe first timein his life, Kevin said he understood what Garrett was telling him, andhe sat on the mountain andcried. Since then, they have looked for the rainbows,both seeing themin the skyafter a particularly hard day andfinding them in life. “It's been kindof a mottoof cursthe weneed to lookfor the rainbows,”he said. “A: Heidialways says, how wehandle’‘this is up tous.” Looking for the rainbows The Bardsleys saythe rainbows areeasier to find because Garrett could alwaysfind them. He appreciatedfiner details of the world that others didn’t notice. The day before Garrett got lost he was petting a friend's horse, and Kevin again learned the complexityof his youngest son. “He said,‘Dad,feel Chris’ horses’ noses. Feel how soft they are.’” Theincidentleft his mind until a couple of weekslater when he was walking Cameron to the bus stop, past those samehorses, and he stopped to pet them. “It just flooded back to methat he sawGod's creations differently than we did,” Kevin said. “Hesaw thelittle things.” Garrett had difficulty reading and hadto go to an early-morningclassfor help.This difficulty didn't stop him,though. During familyscripture study Garrett would beghis parentsto let him read more,while his brothersandsister were begging them not to let him,for fear they'd neverfinish. He alwayswantedto read in school too,his parents remembered. “Hedidn't care. He wasn't embarrassed,” Kevin said. Garrett loved school and would goevenif he was sick; he would havestarted middle school just a few daysafter he got lost. Kevin admitted he was worried about Garrett havinga different teacher for each subject; he wasn't sure the teachers would havetimeto get to know Garrett as closely as his elementary school teachers had. “I didn’t want him to be discouraged by that,” hesaid. Garrett's friends and family say he was funny, alwaystelling jokes and acting goofy. Alex said at Scout campor during sporting events Garrett would be thefirst to say good job or encourage someone whowas falling behind. “That's why, when wehurt, I think he hurts too,because Ithink he always wanted usto be happy,” Kevin said, Heidi Bardsley did not think Garrett would be foundin the searchin early August, but she knew they hadto doit. Their responsibility, she said, was to do as much as they possiblycould. The rest they trusted to God. She wasright; Garrett did not come home. But so many other good things came from the search that she and Kevin sayit’s nota loss. None of their efforts have beenfruitless, they believe, becauseof the manylives changed. “I don’t think we even know the extentofit yet,” Heidi said. “So manypeople's lives have been touched by Garrett, more thanif he'd lived to be 80 years old.” Manyofthose people have contacted the Bardsleysand sharedtheir stories. One man decided to donate moneyevery monthto a different charity. Another man, a music teacherback east, pledged to spendhis free time finding and fixing up instruments for inner-city schools. A local man who suffered from involuntary convulsions felt a strong desire to search for Garrett, despite his physicaldifficulty. His wife told him that was impossible. “Hesaid,‘I went to bed that night andjust felt this overwhelming impressionthat I needed to go,’” Kevin said The man droveup to the mountains, hauled out his backpack andstarted upthetrail, suffering from convulsions the whole way. “As he walkedintothe forestit stopped,” he said, “He has neverhadit eversince.” Also,the searchearlier this month turned out to be a blessing for a Scout on the mountain with heart problems. The boy was having serious medical problems but, becauseofthe helicopter, sheriff's deputies andall the people in the area, he madeit to a hospital quickly. “Weknow ofat least two Scouts that Garrett has saved,”Heidi said. Andalthough Wally participated in the first search,thefinal search and every searcheffort in between,hesaid his wife madethe biggest sacrifice of the family. She was pregnant and due any timethefirst week in August. Kevin told Wally to stay homeandbe withher.Instead, she was induced the night before the search. “She’said, “You know,I can't go search, I don’t evenfeel like I can go up andhelp,but this is one wayI can help the search,”” Wallysaid, laughing. RememberGarrett Sometimes Kevin Bardsleystill has trouble accepting the resolution — or lack thereof. “I just couldn't believe we couldn't find him,” hesaid. “Andthat was a hard thing.” Wallystruggleswith it too, althoughhis take is somewhat more pragmatic,as hetells the Scouts when theysay they've looked in a million places. “A million places seemslike a big number, but there are a billion places to look, and wehaven't lookedinthe right place,” he said. Wallystill believes they'll find the right place eventually, and he says he wants to go back up the mountains to see howfar Garrett got. But in the meantime,life still has to be lived. Thebracelets the Bardsleys had madenolonind Garrett;” they say “Remember Kevinand Heidi say they want pote to remembertheir baby, rememberhis li andhis goals and rememberthefeelings that brought thousandsof individuals together to help their family. Scout and churchleadersare doing their part, telling their boys the importance of serving a mission andfulfilling their responsibilities. “Oneof those things he'd alwaystell youis, ‘I wantto go on a mission, | want to be a missionary,"” Wally said. “He's doinga different kind of mission now.” Heidisaid their return from Mexico ignited the mission talk in her son. “Wethought hehad eight years,not eight months,” she said. The Bardsley family and the Scouts returned to the Mirror Lake Trailhead in the High Uintas last weekend, the sameplace Garrett was lost. Cameronreceived his EagleScout award, and Garrett received the Spirit of the Eagle, an award forScouts who were working towardtheir Eagle but died beforeit was completed Kevin said while his childrenarea little wary about returning to a place that holds so many memories, most of them unpleasant, he believes returning is importantforall of them. The lake where Garrett was last seen has a sacred feeling aboutit that Heidi and Kevin appreciate when theyreturn. And whileit is still nameless ontherolls of the U.S. Forest Service, its visitors last weekend have named it for a young man whose bodyis somewhere near and whosespiritstill visits. “Wedon't care what the rest of everybody else calls it.” Wallysaid. “In our mind thatis Garrett's Lake, andthat will always be Garrett’s Lake.” |