MADRAS, Ore. – The news that the man responsible for their son’s death had been captured was welcome – but not comforting, say the parents of Army Pfc. Thomas Tucker.
“It’s bittersweet, because it doesn’t bring him back,” Meg Tucker told The Bulletin newspaper of Bend. “If they did capture this guy and he’s the one who did it, at least he’ll be not out there to do these things to someone else.”
The U.S. military said Thursday that Iraqi and U.S. forces arrested the al-Qaida in Iraq cell leader alleged to be responsible for the torture and deaths of Tucker and Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston. The arrest came in a raid Tuesday south of Baghdad.
Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the deaths. The bodies were recovered after a search by 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.
Wes and Meg Tucker said they are still trying to come to terms with their son’s death at age 25.
“I think the hardest part this year was going through Christmas and Thanksgiving without him,” said Wes Tucker.
They said Thomas’ Army experience had given their son a purpose and confidence he lacked after he graduated from high school.
“Before he left he was in debt, he was kind of a mess, probably the biggest mess he’d been,” Meg Tucker said.
But when Tom returned from boot camp, “he was so proud,” Wes said. “That was something he hadn’t been able to do for quite a few years, was puff his chest out.”
“Tom had no idea what the big picture of this war is, just like I don’t either, but what the Army did for him to make him such a proud person – there is no way we can bash any of them,” Wes Tucker said.
Wes and Meg Tucker are both back to work, at a local mill and Madras High School, respectively, but they’ve changed parts of their lives.
“Every time an unfamiliar car drives up to my work, I think that it’s going to be Tom, or it’s going to be the Army saying it’s all been a mistake,” Meg Tucker said.
Wes Tucker took a month off work and then moved to a job in a new building at the BrightWood mill, to make it easier to go back to work.
“I could still see him walking into the shop back there,” Wes Tucker said. “He’d always come by the mill and say, ‘Dad, you got 20 bucks?’ “
Meg stopped attending her clogging classes, because she was on a trip in Burns with that group when her family learned that her son was missing.
“She can’t do that anymore because that’s something that she associates with finding out about Tommy, and that was something she completely enjoyed,” said Tayva Tucker, 29, Tom Tucker’s older sister.
They’ve kept all of Tom’s things: his guitar, sandblasted sunglasses, a name tag, the last packages they sent him in Iraq, two packs of Army rations and the truck he was fixing up. Meg Tucker said she can’t even think about throwing out anything that was Tom’s.
“You wake up every morning and you pray that you’ve been in a coma and this really hasn’t happened, but you get up every morning and it’s the same as the day before,” Meg Tucker said. “They say it gets easier, but I don’t know, I don’t know when.”
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