RANDOLPH TWP.: Two women, each holding flags, arm in arm, tears falling down their faces, watched as 1st Lt. Ashley I. White Stumpf’s casket was carried out of St. Joseph Church.“She is one of our kids,” Alexsa Wanchick said Monday. “She belongs to us.”Her words described the depth of feeling shown by people who lined the streets and filled the church on Waterloo Road for the funeral of the first woman from the Akron region killed in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.In the Knights of Columbus Randolph Council 2039 hall next to the church, about 25 volunteers put together donated food for the luncheon that followed the funeral Mass.In the hall were two large poster boards covered in photographs of Stumpf, 24, a Marlington High School graduate whose family lives in Marlboro Township in Stark County.There were pictures of her as a little girl, at Christmas, at the beach, as an athlete in school, in the Army, with her family and at her wedding to Army Capt. Jason Stumpf, a ceremony that took place at the same church only about five months ago.“We are a close-knit community, and we take care of our own,” said Joanne Krantz, St. Joseph’s chairwoman of the funeral luncheon committee.“This is Monday morning, and people took off work to come and bring food,” she said.More than an hour before the funeral procession left the Arnold Funeral Home in Hartville for the church, Bruce Forney, 62, of Rootstown, was waiting in his car in the parking lot of the Randolph youth baseball fields so that he could witness the procession. He had dropped off food earlier in the morning.“It hit me hard,” said Forney, whose wife, Jackie, drives a school bus with Stumpf’s mother, Deborah, in the Waterloo district. “You start realizing it is permanent.”Stumpf, a Kent State University graduate, had been a member of the Ohio Army National Guard and was in the North Carolina National Guard when she volunteered to become part of the Cultural Support Team, a group of female soldiers who work with women and children in war zones.A female Army major who supervised the team in Afghanistan said Stumpf “alleviated fear” and was tremendous at her job, loving the work with women and children in Afghan villages.Tribute from brotherStumpf’s brother, Josh White of Hagerstown, Md., told those at the funeral that “death is what makes life worth living.”To explain the meaning of his sister’s life, he said, is impossible.“As amazing and incomprehensible a place that heaven is, it is now better with Ashley in its midst,” he said.Stumpf was attached to the Joint Special Operations Task Force and worked with Army Rangers in Afghanistan. She was killed with two Rangers in a roadside bombing Oct. 22.Col. Mark O’Donnell, deputy commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, quoted Winston Churchill when talking about Stumpf’s sacrifice.“Never in the field of human conflict is so much owed by so many to so few,” he said. “Almost 70 years later, those words ring true.”O’Donnell also quoted President Theodore Roosevelt from his speech called The Man in the Arena.“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better,” he said, reading Roosevelt’s words. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”Stumpf, he said, “is the man in the arena.”Funeral procession Ten Rangers marched in front of the procession, just behind bagpiper Brian Mc-
Elhinney of Akron, who played Going Home. Behind them was an 1895 horse-drawn hearse from McFarland Funeral Home in Warren that carried the flag-draped casket.Then came a long line of family members and friends who walked the short distance to the old church cemetery, where other veterans are buried, including Civil War veteran Basar Adolph. He died of his war wounds at age 22 in 1865, a few months after the conflict ended.As the procession slowly moved up a road to the cemetery, children from St. Joseph School stood silently and watched.Capt. Jason Stumpf spoke of his wife’s love, compassion and pure heart and soul.“It was truly love at first sight,” he said of their relationship.She always thought of others first, he said. “I am not the ideal husband,” Stumpf said. “She was the ideal wife.”Former Marlington High classmate Briana Broadwater, 24, of Tallmadge, said she was “honored to have been one of the thousands of lives that Ashley was able to touch in her 24 years.”“Her service and sacrifice for our country will not be forgotten by our class, our community or our country,” Broadwater said. “She is a hero.”The Rev. Thomas Dyer, former pastor of the church, asked during the Mass: “Who among us is not touched by the depth of this tragedy?”He spoke directly to the many members of the military inside the church. “Take care of yourselves,” he said.Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.