He could not grieve in peace. They would not let him. As he buried his son, the Marine who wanted to serve in the military since he was 9, they paraded just out of sight of the grave and held up signs that said, “You?re going to hell,” and “Fag troops.”
Albert Snyder wept when he saw the video later.
He threw up when he read that the Westboro Baptist Church wrote that his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, was raised for the devil to be an idolater.
He walked out of a federal courtroom in Baltimore when the fundamentalist fringe church played a 9/11 video while a voice sang, “America, America, God showed his wrath to thee” to the tune of “America the Beautiful.”
Snyder, a slightly balding 52-year-old industrial equipment salesman, sits in the living room of his home, and laments the lost chance to mourn his only son with a fitting goodbye, not marred by the condemnation of what he called self-righteous, fire-and-brimstone preachers.
“It?s just like a piece of me is gone, and I?ll never get it back,” Snyder says, his voice quivering. “I still think of Matt every day. I don?t think I?ll ever get closure, and people ask me if it gets easier. I don?t think it gets easier. But you learn to cope with it.”
Snyder, a soft-spoken Southwest Baltimore native, has had to do much of his coping and grieving in the public eye.
He became the first person to win a suit against Westboro, which protests soldiers? funerals because it believes God kills American troops as punishment for the country?s tolerance of homosexuality. His legal battle made Snyder an unwitting hero to soldiers and their families.
“The outpouring and all the support I?ve gotten have just been astonishing to me,” Snyder says. “America is a pretty great place.”
In the weeks after the trial began, about 4,000 people from the United States and around the world sent notes, e-mails and letters or made phone calls.
He reads every e-mail and letter he receives.
“The e-mails and letters I?ve gotten have helped me think I made the right decision,” Snyder says.
One letter, from Philip Knight, of Denver, reads: “I hope you will continue to push the issue within the court system to get what you and your family deserve from these anti-American bastards.”
Framed military metals, photos of Matt in uniform and a knitted cloth reading, “Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder is our hero” adorn the walls at Snyder?s home.
The day the Sept. 11 video played in court, Snyder got a voice message from servicemen saying, “Hooah,” a grunt of approval for Marines, who thanked him for taking a stand against Westboro.
“It just hit home,” Snyder says, “what these people were doing to their brothers.”
He has fought severe depression and erratic diabetes in the 16 months after the funeral, a result, he says, of the nightmares he can?t get out of his head. A jury awarded him $10.9 million in U.S. District Court after finding the church?s founder, Fred Phelps, and two of his daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebekah Phelps-Davis, inflicted emotional distress and invaded Snyder?s privacy.
Albert?s sister, Bonnie, was like a second mother to Matt. She sat through the weeklong trial in Baltimore, crying and at times unable to watch.
“My brother?s my hero,” she says. “And Matt?s my hero.”
Today, Snyder focuses on the fond memories of refereeing Matt?s soccer games, spending Christmastime or going to Disney World ? their last vacation together ? a year before his son died in a Humvee accident in Iraq.
Matt, 20, a Westminster High graduate, was the middle child between his sisters, Sarah, 23, and Tracie, 19.
The little things keep reminding Albert of what he lost.
In the grocery store, when he walks past Matt?s favorite food, spiced ring apples, the father?s stomach churns and he almost breaks down.
Now that the trial has ended, he finally can lay his son to rest.
“I need to try and untangle everything that?s in my mind,” he says. “I need some alone time.”
