The funeral that stopped the city: Corporal James Szuba and K-9 Ricky, January 2010

9–15 January 2010 · the line-of-duty funerals, 2003 and 2010

The death: Corporal James John Szuba, forty-two, a Mishawaka police K-9 officer, was killed with his K-9 partner Ricky when their squad car was struck while Szuba was assisting in a pursuit. The record of the crash stands in conflict and is printed whole: the Bethel Beacon placed it "on the evening of Jan. 8," at "the intersection of McKinley and Fir," with Szuba responding to another officer's call for back-up on a speeding car, struck by a drunk driver; his South Bend Tribune obituary has him pass "at 9 p.m. Saturday, January 9th, from injuries resulting from an accident at Fir Road and US #20"; the Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial fixes his End of Watch on Saturday, 9 January 2010, and counts him the fourth Mishawaka police officer to die in the line of duty. He was of New Carlisle — his home ground, boundary-printed — and the city's officer; a Congressional Record tribute of 13 January 2010 notes the service ran in the family: his father Floyd was an officer, and his brother John a South Bend police sergeant.

The funeral: It was held where the city holds things too big for any church: at Bethel College. Visitation ran Thursday 14 January, 2 to 8 p.m., in the Everest-Rohrer Chapel and Auditorium, and the funeral followed at 11 a.m. on Friday 15 January in the same room — Bethel hosted, in the Beacon's account, "because of the amount of people and police cars expected," its staff clearing the campus roads and sidewalks the day before and its students and staff moving their cars to make room. The Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs newsletter, reporting the service it attended with its dogs, counted over 1,000 officers and 100 K-9 partners in attendance. Then the procession moved: more than 400 police and emergency vehicles from around Indiana formed it, through the Bethel campus and then through the streets of Mishawaka, and the Beacon's sentence is the scale of the day in one line — "Thousands stood along Mishawaka streets." A partner was buried with the honors too: Ricky, the K-9 who died in the same car, is named in the memorial record beside his handler, and a hundred working dogs stood in the chapel's congregation. This is the funeral the pattern describes: the city's streets lined, its traffic given over to a cortege, its college turned into a cathedral for a corporal. It stands at full size on the count of three independent counters — the college's paper, the funeral record, and the comfort-dog ministry's newsletter — not on any single telling.

The pair behind it, December 2003: Six years earlier the city had learned the shape of such a week. Early on Saturday 13 December 2003, Corporal Thomas Roberts, forty-three, and Patrolman Bryan S. Verkler, twenty-seven, were shot and killed on duty — the city's first line-of-duty deaths in more than seventy years, since Clarence Casper on 10 June 1930 — and a memorial of flowers and verses grew at the police station on North Church Street. The two men were viewed together, Tuesday, at the Bethel College gymnasium, 1001 W. McKinley Avenue, from 2 to 8 p.m.; Roberts's service followed at 11 a.m. Wednesday at St. Monica Catholic Church, 222 W. Mishawaka Avenue, with burial at St. Joseph Valley Cemetery, and Verkler's at 11 a.m. Thursday in the Bethel College Fine Arts Building, with burial in his hometown of Walkerton. The Tribune's photo record carries residents paying tribute as Verkler's procession came down the St. Joseph Valley Parkway. Two funerals in two days filled the college and a parish church between them; at shared size they stand as the rehearsal the city never wanted for January 2010, and the reason Bethel's rooms were the known answer when the Szuba family and the department planned.

The founders' test, printed as it returned: The older names the pattern names were tested and do not stand at this size. Adolphus Eberhart's funeral, in June 1893, went from the Mishawaka Methodist Episcopal Church on a Sunday afternoon (the Tribune of 10 June 1893) — a founder's church funeral, with no crowd, closure or procession in the record reached. James C. Eberhart, dead at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1915, was viewed at the family residence, 732 Lincoln Way East, and buried from the house at 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon (the Mishawaka Enterprise, 5 February 1915) — a great house funeral of the residence era, at residence size. The Beiger and Eberhart generation was buried handsomely and privately; the city-stopping funeral, in this record, is a twentieth- and twenty-first-century form, and it belongs to the police. Marvin Wood's funeral of October 1999 — his Milan team in the front row, carried in the halls-of-fame file — is a noted funeral, tenderly remembered, and not a city-stopping one, and is not promoted into one here.

Sources:

1. Bethel Beacon, January 2010 — the crash account (evening of 8 January, McKinley and Fir, the back-up call, the drunk driver); Bethel hosting the funeral for the expected crowds; the 400-plus-vehicle procession; "Thousands stood along Mishawaka streets."
2. Obituary of James John Szuba, South Bend Tribune via Legacy, 13 January 2010 — 17 May 1967 – 9 January 2010, of New Carlisle; death at 9 p.m. Saturday 9 January from the accident at Fir Road and US 20; visitation 14 January and funeral 15 January at the Everest-Rohrer Chapel/Auditorium, Bethel College.
3. Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial — End of Watch Saturday, 9 January 2010; the fourth Mishawaka police line-of-duty death.
4. Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs newsletter, 20 January 2010 — over 1,000 officers and 100 K-9 partners at the 15 January service.
5. Congressional Record, tribute of 13 January 2010 — Szuba's father Floyd an officer, his brother John a South Bend police sergeant.
6. South Bend Tribune reporting via Police1, December 2003 — Roberts and Verkler killed 13 December 2003; the first line-of-duty deaths since Clarence Casper (10 June 1930); the North Church Street memorial; the joint viewing at the Bethel gymnasium; Roberts's service at St. Monica and Verkler's at the Bethel Fine Arts Building, with the Tribune's procession photographs.
7. South Bend Tribune, 10 June 1893 — Adolphus Eberhart's funeral from the Mishawaka Methodist Episcopal Church. Mishawaka Enterprise, 5 February 1915 — James C. Eberhart's viewing and funeral from the residence at 732 Lincoln Way East.