 "Photo: Mary Kang/The Daily Texan")
KILLEEN — Most of the seats in the sanctuary of Memorial Baptist Church were empty Thursday night after the shooting at nearby Fort Hood left members of the community in shock.
About 40 dedicated members of the 3,400-member church, however, turned out to seek support and pray for the friends and family of the massacre’s victims.
The military had yet to release the names of victims, but members said that in a congregation where 70 percent of members are either active or inactive military, everyone is affected somehow.
“The two questions people asked were why, and where was God in all this?” said Pastor Kenneth Cavey.
Many members of the church faced those questions while awaiting the end of a lockdown on Fort Hood, which lifted sometime after 8 p.m.
Leonard Nuuhiwa, a church deacon and Vietnam veteran, said he could only imagine what was going through the minds of the servicemen going overseas when news like Thursday’s reached them.
“Just to be deployed is one thing — serving in a hostile environment,” he said. “But to come back and have one of your own turn a gun on you?”
Nuuhiwa, 69, said the congregation sees the stress of service at home when military wives meet on a weekly basis throughout their husbands’ deployment.
“When a unit deploys from Fort Hood, it affects the whole community,” he said. “You’re talking thousands of people.”
Fort Hood is the largest military base in the U.S. and has a population of more than 33,000. Just down the road, many of Killeen’s 86,000 residents are family members of active service troops, retired veterans or contractors for the base.
The church and the community provide a support system Nuuhiwa didn’t have when he was deployed to Vietnam as a soldier. But when tragedy happens on the base, the whole community feels it.
Waymon Yon, a 57-year-old Gulf War veteran, teaches classes at Central Texas College in Killeen. The community college, just outside of the army base, was locked down until 5:30 p.m.
“I think anxiety is kind of all around us now,” Yon said. “No matter who’s affected [directly], it affects all of us.”
Bridget Cavey, Kenneth’s wife, said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, church members found information about the base not just on news sites and television, but also through reaching out to one another on social media networks like Facebook.
She received a stream of chat requests from congregants when she logged onto Facebook on Thursday.
“So many of our women, their husbands are out on the field this week with no access to cell phones,” Cavey said. “Many of them have no idea what’s going on.”
Thursday’s shooting was not the first violent incident to rock the community. In October 1991, a shooter drove his car into a Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen and then opened fire, killing 23 and wounding another 20 before turning the gun on himself.
Church member Dick Chapin, a 72-year-old Vietnam veteran, had several friends killed in the incident. He said Thursday’s 1991 shooting brought back memories of that day.
“It just tends to bring us closer when something like that happens,” he said.
Regina Phinney, manager of donor recruitment at Scott & White Blood Center, said when the medical center asked residents for help, the response was overwhelming.
“I’ve been doing interviews all night, and as soon as we put the word out, we had a line of people out the door within 30 minutes,” Phinney said. “We had a wonderful response, but we still need people to come out and donate.”
Although the hospital was covered Thursday night, she urged UT students in particular to come and donate during the upcoming week.
Until area hospitals ask for more community support, the congregation waits for new information from the base and prays.
“You just pray for strength and encouragement for all the family and friends of those killed and injured,” said member Dick Chapin.
— Additional reporting by Lena Price
That many un-armed soldiers all together in one location. From here on out let's have better force protection!! A military policeman or woman with a magnetic gun wand could have averted all those deaths!