Last Friday the funeral for Petty Officer Jon Tumilson, 35, was held in his hometown of Rockford, Iowa at the Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock Community School.  Tumilson was one of the thirty-eight elite Navy SEALS that died in the helicopter crash in Afghanistan earlier this month.  He was, as they say, the tip of the spear…the first to go in and the leading edge.  Throughout the entire funeral, Tumilson’s devoted Labrador retriever, “Hawkeye”, guarded the coffin refusing to leave his master’s side. 
As the saying goes…may all of us strive to be as good as our dogs believe we are. 
(DesMoinesRegister)…Rockford, Ia. – Jon Thomas Tumilson wrote a class paper when he was 15 about how he wanted to spend the next 20 years as a Navy SEAL, an elite member of the U.S. armed forces.
On Friday, an estimated 1,500 mourners paid their last respects to Petty Officer Tumilson, a Navy SEAL whose helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan on Aug. 6, about 20 years after Tumilson wrote that paper. He was 35 when he died in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. forces in the decade-old U.S. deployment to Afghanistan.
“J.T. was going to be a Navy SEAL come hell or high water,” friend Scott Nichols said of Tumilson, who was born in Osage on July 1, 1976, the nation’s bicentennial year, and grew up in Rockford.  Outside the service at the Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock gym, two cranes hoisted a huge U.S. flag in Tumilson’s honor.  “If J.T. had known he was going to be shot down when going to the aid of others, he would have went anyway,” said Boe Nankivel, another friend.
Tumilson was the baby of the family, the son of George and Kathleen Tumilson of Rockford.  His older sisters, Joy McMeekan of Taylor Ridge, Ill., and Kristie Pohlman of Cedar Rapids, sent many in the audience scrambling for tissues when they explained how crushed they were when they learned that the Taliban had shot down a helicopter with SEALs aboard.  McMeekan said she immediately thought her baby brother was dead. She could feel it. And when she went to bed, she felt like someone was in the room with her.  “Was it you coming to say goodbye?” she asked, as her brother’s body lay in a flag-draped coffin in the front of the gym.
Pohlman said her brother had a big heart. “Your dreams were big and seemed impossible to nearly everyone on the outside,” Pohlman said of her brother’s desire to join one of the world’s elite military units. “I always knew you’d somehow do what you wanted.”  McMeekan and Pohlman walked back to their seats hand in hand as many onlookers in the stands sobbed. The sisters could be heard crying in the arms of other family members as the sound system played “Homesick,” by MercyMe.
The song begins:
“You’re in a better place, I’ve heard a thousand times
“And at least a thousand times I’ve rejoiced for you
“But the reason why I’m broken, the reason why I cry
“Is how long must I wait to be with you.”
One other song had a special place in the service: Tumilson had picked a song for his own funeral, having no idea when that day would come. Early in the service, the sound system played that song, “If I Leave This World Alive,” by Flogging Molly.
One of its lines promises a presence after death: “If I ever leave this world alive, I’ll come back down and sit beside your feet tonight.”  (Read more….)
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Family members followed Tumilson’s ribbon-winning Labrador retriever, Hawkeye, into the service. Hawkeye later accompanied his new owner, Nichols, Tumilson’s close friend, to the stage, where the Lab dutifully dropped to the floor to listen.