A young man honored by two tribes

One of the hardest assignments for a journalist is attending a funeral for someone you didn’t know, never met, and have no connection with.

At such times, I always feel like Brad Pitt’s modernized Grim Reaper in “Meet Joe Black” — standing dispassionately on the fringes of the event, waiting patiently for it to be over so I can do my job.

Will Branham’s funeral last Sunday was different, and I spent part of the next day trying to figure out why.

Was it because he was so young (26)? Because he left two small children? Because he was well-liked?

All of the above, probably. But there was something else.

Certainly, it was one of the more remarkable ceremonies I’ve ever witnessed. More than half of the people in attendance were either from law enforcement or fire and rescue crews, and another third was made up of members of the Monacan tribe, many of them in ceremonial dress.

That’s because Branham was both a Monacan and a cop, and had obviously earned respect in both camps.

These days, most Monacans live dual lives, and it was impossible to pick out those who weren’t dressed the part from the general crowd.

Among those who stood up to speak about their friend at the Whitten Monelison Chapel in Madison Heights, for instance, was a young man I assumed Branham knew from some other context. Nothing about him looked Indian.  But when the mourners moved to St. Paul’s Cemetery in the foothills of Amherst County for the second part of the funeral, it was Rufus Elliott who chanted the words to the first song.

It was only later that it struck me. Branham grew up in one tribe, then became part of another.

For while law enforcement departments may not be tribes in the ethnic sense, their similarity to Native Americans is striking. Both operate under a philosophy of communal support, their members even willing to give up their lives for their fellow tribe members. They have rituals that cement their identity. Finally, there is a sense that they are misunderstood and unappreciated by those outside the tribe.

“Will was a Monacan,” said chief Kenneth Branham. “We let them (the Lynchburg PD) borrow him for awhile.”

For the past few years, we’ve run a series called “Lives to Remember,” focusing on a local person who has recently departed. I’ve been assigned more than a few of those stories — and while they’re sometimes uncomfortable to do, they’ve taught me a valuable lesson.

Almost invariably, what people talk about at a wake or a funeral are the personal things about the deceased. Hardly anyone ever says, “He was a great lawyer” or “She was the best doctor in town.“ Rather, what’s remembered are the compassionate or funny things that person has done and said.

The singer Jewel once put that beautifully: “In the end, only kindness matters.”

Dead at 26, Will Branham never got the chance to become famous. Maybe he never would have been. But I’ve attended the funerals of people who were a lot more high profile and seen a lot fewer people in attendance.

Branham’s tribes turned out in force on Sunday. They filled all the seats in the Whitten Chapel sanctuary and stood all around the edges and packed the lobby outside. And when the mourners then traveled in a long procession to St. Paul’s Cemetery on ancient Monacan land, they passed under an enormous American flag suspended by two cranes over Father Judge Road.  Little knots of people stood alongside the two-lane road, many waving flags. Some saluted.

A stranger would have thought Will Branham was an Iraq War casualty, or perhaps a police officer whose life was cut short violently in the line of duty.
Yet while he died young and bravely, it was from cancer, not a bullet.
Both the police and Monacan tribes are known for their stoicism in the face of sorrow and hardship, but that changed on Sunday. As some of Branham’s fellow police officers stood up to talk about him, their stolid cop faces fell away like masks, and they started to cry unabashedly. It was a touching and astonishing sight to see.

“After seeing the way the members of the Lynchburg police department treated Will and his family,” said Kenneth Branham, “I have new respect for them.”

He also had tears on his eyes.