Ed Kirkpatrick planned to share some scotch with his son on the first Memorial Day after Sgt. Scott Kirkpatrick’s death in Iraq.
The father would have a drink and pour “a wee dram” of Glenfarclas in the grass over Sgt. Scott Kirkpatrick’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
But security staff outside the cemetery turned away Ed and his wife, Martha, Monday.
The Maryland couple were five car lengths from the entrance, after waiting through more than an hour of traffic, when they were ordered to leave the area to make room for President Bush’s motorcade, and told they would not be able to return for three hours.
With the cemetery already filled to capacity, the Kirkpatricks tried to find another access point, but eventually returned to their home in Dickerson, Md., about an hour away, where Ed mowed the grass to blow off steam.
“We never did get to visit with Scott,” they said on a message posted on Examiner.com.
Cemetery spokeswoman Gina Gray said the motorcade should have resulted in a 30-minute delay and that the couple should not have been turned away.
“Our employees, our guards don’t do that. They don’t turn somebody away,” Gray said, noting that three outside agencies were involved with directing traffic. “Whoever told them, they were wrong to say that.”
But retired Air Force Lt. Col. Lawrence Boteler, of McLean, said he had been turned away trying to attend the event last year and was saddened to learn of the Kirkpatricks’ trouble.
“If it’s going to be a holiday, I don’t dare drive on the site,” Boteler said.
It was to be the first Memorial Day at Arlington for the Kirkpatricks.
Scott Kirkpatrick, 26, of Reston, was killed Aug. 11 with three other sergeants when a booby trap bomb exploded as they pursued a sniper into a house in Iraq.
The Kirkpatricks particularly expressed their disgust with the president, noting others with symbols of fallen family members were similarly turned away. “Hundreds if not thousands of families were denied this sorrowful pleasure for the convenience of the man who sent them to their deaths,” the Kirkpatricks wrote.
The family planned a return trip later in the week, without the crowds and without the headaches.
On Monday night, Martha Kirkpatrick told Ed it was just another day: “For us, every day is Memorial Day.”
