Mom Searches for Missing Veteran Son Gary Chronister

Mom Searches for Missing Veteran Son
By DAN BARRY,The New York Times
Posted: 2008-01-21 15:15:38
Filed Under: Nation News
KENNESAW, Ga. (Jan. 21) -- The man emerged from the night’s anonymity to sit at the counter, across from the stainless steel grill and the stacks of white plates. He wore a blue jacket appropriate for the January cold, but his left hand was covered with writing of some kind. And, ever so softly, he was talking to himself.

It was 3:20 on the second morning of a new year indistinguishable still from the difficult one just past, in a 24-hour chain restaurant on Highway 41 called the Huddle House, where pie and respite are served to the hungry and solitary. The tired waitress, Patsy Schirmer, pulling a rare overnight, approached the customer and asked:

What can I get for you?

The man accepted this open-ended question in terms of food only, muttering an order of scrambled eggs and grits and requesting water, with lemon. He ate everything on his plate, continuing his private conversation all the while. He paid his bill, left no tip, and slipped back behind night’s curtain.

A woman walked in 20 minutes later, carrying leaflets. Her name was Sheryl Futrell and she had been searching for weeks for her disoriented son, an Iraq-Afghanistan war veteran named Gary Chronister. Here is his photograph, she said — and you know the rest.

Soon the waitress was wailing Oh my God, he was just here. Soon the mother was making frantic telephone calls, searching for a flashlight to beam into the brush out back, bouncing between sorrow and joy. Yes, my son always orders scrambled eggs. Yes, he always asks for lemon with his water. Yes, he is so off his meds that he would be talking to himself.