Kris Green has been a widow five years now, ever since her husband was electrocuted along with three other Alaska Boy Scout leaders at the 2005 National Scout Jamboree in Virginia.
The loss still feels fresh for Green and her four sons, especially the two youngest, twins who were at the jamboree. The last shirt that Michael Shibe wore at home still rests on a chair by Kris and Michael's bed.
Green said she can't bear to box up the physical remnants of his life.
The sons are young men now, trying to live the way their father would have wanted. On the day Michael was buried, the sons and their mother put their hands on his casket and on the spur of the moment made a pinky promise, a serious deal in their family. "This will not destroy us," they vowed.
Grief isn't as orderly as the experts like to make out. Of the three fathers killed, two still had children at home, and the experiences of their families have been vastly different.
One widow moved away to move on.
The other hasn't yet let go.
Both families have weathered rough spots with the kids.
Now, as a new group of Alaska Scouts and adult volunteers gathers for another National Scout Jamboree, families of the lost leaders are sharing what they've learned about shock, grief and healing.
"The most important thing for me is learning that it really doesn't go away," Green, now 51, said of the pain. "People said, 'Just give it time and you will heal and it will be all better.' And the reality for me was you learn how to live with it."
TRAGEDY TAKES FOUR
The men died doing one last good deed, helping hired workers erect a large dining canopy. Just as they guided the tall center pole into position, it touched a power line that the surviving Scout leaders said they never saw. Two tent company workers and another Alaska Scout leader were injured.
Shibe was 49, a third-generation Alaskan, a foreman at Alaska Communications Systems, an IBEW union member. His four boys were ages 14 to 19 when he died. Two were at the jamboree.
Michael LaCroix, 42, was general manager of VendAlaska and a father of four, ages 7 to 16, when he died. One son was with him.
Ronald Bitzer was 58, a retired lawyer and administrative judge with two grown sons. He was involved with Scouts for nearly 50 years, an avid downhill skier and tennis player. His widow said the family didn't want to talk for the story.
Scott E. Powell, 57, spent 21 years as resident ranger at Camp Gorsuch, a Scouting site near Mirror Lake. He never married and didn't have children. The year before he died, he retired and moved to a family cabin in Perrysville, Ohio.
He was figuring out what to do in the next stage of life when an opportunity came up for him to go to his first national jamboree, one of his sisters, Anne Rentfrow, said recently.
Most of his belongings are still in the cabin: the carved canoe paddles and woven Native blanket, the camp song books he had printed up. His dog, Critter, was adopted by a friend and died in 2008, his sister said.
The Anchorage community donated money to the families of the four men. Powell's family used its share to build a new staff cabin at Camp Gorsuch, Rentfrow said.
'FALLING OFF A CLIFF'
Kris Green said that when she heard the accident had killed Michael, "The world went black."
Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, local Scouting groups, friends and co-workers carried the family through.
The first year went relatively well for her sons. Then their world seemed to collapse.
"I wasn't very good, now that I think back on it. We were kind of in shock still and just made some bad decisions, I guess," said Paul, now 19.
"We all did," Neil, now 23, said.
Green said the family didn't want to talk about their misbehavior in detail. Some trouble with the law. They were held accountable, she said.
"It was like falling off a cliff. And then we found our way back," she said.
They are more solid now. Paul is working for the Federal Aviation Administration and is a student at the University of Alaska Anchorage. His twin, Karl, works at a gold mine. Neil just graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in international studies and Japanese. Brent, 24, earned a commercial aviation degree from the University of North Dakota and is headed to graduate school in Missouri to study aviation safety.
Still, what should have been the happiest times were terrible without Michael.
One excruciating moment came when Paul earned the rank of Eagle Scout. He had created a brick-walled flower bed at a city park renamed for his father. At the ceremony in June 2009 with Scouts and leaders lined up to watch, Green pinned the Eagle ribbon to her son's chest.
"That was harder than burying Michael," she said, breaking up talking about it. "He should have been there. Those were big things."
About eight months after the accident, in the spring of 2006 when the cherry blossoms were blooming in Virginia, she took the twins to the jamboree site, to connect with her husband in that place.
"I needed to stand there. I needed to breathe that air," Green said. They blew into bottles and took the air back to Alaska along with dirt that she shared with the other widows. Her husband was so Alaskan. He should have died here, she said.
"He took his last breath in a foreign place. It was really, really important for me to bring that air," she said. They released it at the Michael J. Shibe Park dedication.
A FATHER'S LEGACY
The Shibe sons say they are just trying to live up to their father's high expectations.
Do a good turn daily.
Work as hard as you can, Paul said.
Push through when things get tough, Neil said.
Shibe was the go-to handy guy at church, in the neighborhood, with Scouts.
And when he volunteered for someone else's project, he volunteered his four sons too.
"There's the devil on my shoulder and then there's my dad saying, 'Hard work builds character. Shoveling gravel builds character,' " Neil said, laughing.
Last summer, Neil painted the family home in Sand Lake.
People don't talk about Michael much anymore. Green wants them to know she wishes they would.
The family got through financially with life insurance and community donations, which are paying the boys' college bills.
Green said she did things she never thought she'd have to do. She taught the twins to drive and still shudders at the experience. She did the taxes. She changed jobs. She now works for the state overseeing autism programs.
Boy Scouts of America, the tent contractor and the local electric company in Virginia made financial settlements with all five affected Scout families after the accident. The families can't say how much.
Green said she used that settlement money to buy a cabin at Nancy Lake.
"It is a place where we all go and have fun and enjoy Michael's last gift," Green said.
Last Sunday, the five-year anniversary, Green and her four sons planted an evergreen tree in a private family ceremony at the cabin.
NEED TO MOVE ON
The LaCroix family felt enveloped by heartache here too, said Carol Kerr, formerly Carol LaCroix. She remarried in March. It took a long time to feel ready for that.
"We wanted to move on, but it was hard for people to let us move on because every time they'd see us it was the poor pitiful LaCroix family," said Kerr, now 45.
People meant well but it was too much. "We couldn't go to the gas station. Couldn't go to lunch without seeing people. Those puppy dog eyes."
About a year after Michael LaCroix's death, she said, she felt directed by God to move the family to Utah. Though they are Mormon, they had no family there and she had never even visited.
"We didn't want to live it," Kerr said of the constant reminders of losing a husband and father.
"We wanted to be done and strong."
She and her four children started over. They live near Salt Lake City in Bountiful, right next to the temple. She met her husband, Grant. He's the father figure the children needed, she said.
Cullen was 14 when his dad died and had the hardest time of the four. He was at jamboree and saw too much, his mother said. It was chaos: dead and dying men on the ground, emergency vehicles everywhere, adults whisking the boys away.
He couldn't tell who was who. "He just knew his dad was in there," Kerr said.
Disturbing images played over and over in his head.
For a long time, he wouldn't talk about it.
He numbed his mind with drugs and alcohol.
But he sought help and got well, his mother said. Cullen, now 19, graduated from high school in 2009 and plans to go to art school in Utah in the fall.
For the first time in five years, he's "happy-go-lucky Cullen" again, she said.
Clayton, the oldest, was 16 at the time.
"He kind of lost out on the influences that a father has on a son," Kerr said. "He kind of floundered there for the first while, trying to just figure out who he was and how to make life good."
Just weeks after his father was killed, high school football season began. Clayton was a linebacker for South High but thought about taking the year off. His father, who had taught him to play, had so looked forward to each season. Instead, Clayton powered through his grief on the field, and South High dedicated its season to his father. The whole team came to the funeral.
Clayton, now 21, studied aviation mechanics and is graduating from Redstone College near Denver in February.
The youngest two don't really remember their father well, just through the stories that others tell. Daughter Seneca was barely 7 at the time and youngest son Chantry was 11 but is developmentally disabled, with the mind of younger child.
Kerr tries to talk about their father every day, how he was a successful businessman, that he loved them. He left them financially secure, she said.
"They know he wants them to do good stuff and be good people and live life and love life," she said.
Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.
By LISA DEMER
ldemer@adn.com