Father whittles as he prays for son in Iraq

Published 11:17 pm Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Dexter Holmes is always praying for his son, so he figured he might as well do something while he prays.

“I’m a whittler. He was my inspiration for carving the flag,” the Marysville man said. His soldier son, 22-year-old Army Spc. Brent Holmes, has been in Iraq since October.

“When you have a close relative in that situation, it gives you a whole different perspective,” said Holmes, 64. “I got to thinking of all those in the past who’ve gone through what we’re going through. Anybody who has ever served in the military, we owe them so much.”

A whittler? That’s an understatement, to be sure. Outside his home on Sunnyside Boulevard, Holmes has transformed a massive cedar stump into a display of pride and patriotism.

“I’m not an artist, but I feel God’s hand in this,” Holmes said of the stump now carved with an American flag measuring 3-feet-by-5-feet on one side, and on the other an outline of the continental United States painted with an Old Glory design.

A neighbor with a tractor helped Holmes bring the stump from a nearby lot, which was being cleared. It’s about 7 feet tall. Holmes guesses its weight at about 3,000 pounds. After counting rings, he believes the tree from which it came was at least a century old.

Holmes, who works in real estate, wielded a variety of tools: a chisel, a razor knife and an undercut saw, normally used for cutting the bottoms off doors. For patterns, he used a paper map and the tracing of an actual flag.

He hasn’t finished the project, which he hopes to mount on a sturdy trailer and someday bring to parades and other events. There’s still room on the stump for an eagle carving, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the words “All gave some” and “Some gave all.”

The work has taken him more than 80 hours. All the time, he thinks of Brent.

“It’s so hard. We just pray every day,” said Barbara Holmes, Dexter’s wife and Brent’s mother. The youngest of their four children, Brent had talked about joining the Army since he was 10, she said.

Based at Alaska’s Fort Richardson, Brent Holmes’ unit is the 1st Battalion (Airborne) 4th Brigade combat team. Barbara Holmes said their son is guarding an intersection of two roads about 10 minutes south of Baghdad.

The couple check Baghdad’s weather daily. “The heat can get up to 140 degrees. It’s like sitting in an oven,” Barbara Holmes said. In February, their son stepped on an improvised explosive device. “It blew him over this berm, and ruined his eardrum,” Dexter Holmes said.

That wasn’t enough to shorten his tour, which was to have ended this October. Now, it’s extended to December. Beyond that, the Marysville-Pilchuck High School graduate has signed on to stay in the Army until 2013.

In late April and early May, he was home on leave. He and his fiance, Jennifer, were married May 1.

When his mother took him outside to show him the carving, Holmes said Brent turned around and told him, “You did a good job, Dad.”

Telling that story Monday, the father was teary-eyed. Removing his glasses and wiping his eyes with his shirt, he said, “I never totally knew until now what the saying meant, to carry your emotions on your shirtsleeves. I do this a lot.”

As they wait and they pray, Holmes will keep carving.

“It’s a stress reliever,” he said. “It’s my job of preference.”

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.