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closeArmy soldier, husband and father remembered for adventurous spirit
Family and friends attend memorial in Sumner to remember Luke S. Runyan as a happy, daring man loved by many
Roxanne Cooke
Even though Courtney Runyan’s husband has passed away, she feels that he’s with her in spirit.
Army Spc. Luke S. Runyan died Feb. 17 in small-arms fire in Iraq. On June 17, he would have turned 22.
The number 17 continues to hold special significance: The couple’s 1-year-old daughter recently took her first steps — 17 of them.
“We’d like to think he was holding her hand,” Courtney Runyan said.
Family and friends gathered for a memorial service on March 5 in Sumner to honor the fallen soldier, who is from Pennsylvania. Even during a tearjerker slideshow, photographs of Luke Runyan making funny faces and doing silly things brought laughter from the audience.
“It’s what he would’ve wanted,” Courtney Runyan said. “I don’t want it to be sad.”
The 24-year-old Sumner woman met her husband more than two years ago on MySpace, the popular social networking Web site. The two chatted online for a while before meeting in person. On their first date, Luke Runyan showed her around Fort Lewis, where he was stationed.
Courtney Runyan was drawn to the soldier because they shared interests and a “bizarre” personality and sense of humor, she said. He was a risk-taker who enjoyed life.
“He was very adventurous and very happy,” said Courtney Runyan’s longtime friend, Danielle James, who also met her husband through MySpace. “There was nothing that could bring him down.”
Luke Runyan was the “everybody’s friend” kind of guy, Courtney Runyan said.
“Anybody that met him just loved him,” she said.
Courtney Runyan compared their relationship to the main characters in the movie “The Notebook.” They were “constantly newlyweds,” she said.
“It’s like a mad love,” she added.
After six months of dating, Luke Runyan suggested marriage. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so he simply bought her a ring and silently slipped it on her finger one day. The two were married in a Fort Lewis barracks by a friend.
Their two-year anniversary would have been this April. Courtney Runyan last saw her husband when he was on leave from Iraq for Christmas and New Year’s. Before that, he came home last February to see his wife give birth to their daughter, Brynn.
“She had him wrapped around her finger,” she said of Brynn.
The soldier’s family in Philadelphia hosted a family funeral service March 1. Fort Lewis hosted a memorial March 5 for Luke Runyan and Chad D. Groepper, the other soldier who died in the same small-arms fire. A military funeral service at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., was planned for Monday, March 10. Luke Runyan had requested to be buried there.
Riverside Ford and Sunset Chevrolet car dealerships in Sumner lowered their flags to half-staff March 5 at the request of the family.