They then gathered in their hundreds for the first of two rallies before Friday’s private funeral. Inside was his coffin.
Comperatore, who celebrated his 50th birthday last month, spent his life in this working-class community on the Allegheny River. He graduated from Freeport High School, home of the Yellowjackets, and married his former classmate, Helen. Together, they raised two daughters.
“The ultimate family man and the best dad to girls,” his obituary read.
His cousin, Cindy Villella, 58, admired those fatherly qualities. That’s what came to mind when she thought of Comperatore: a loving dad.
“So sincere,” she said as she entered the assembly, “and so caring.”
She summed up her feelings in one word: shock.
For nearly three decades, Comperatore worked in a plastics plant in the wooded hills of Butler County, rising from maintenance supervisor to project engineer. In his spare time, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve and as a volunteer firefighter—“the first one in a burning building,” recalls Buffalo Township Fire Chief Kip Johnston.
His Christian faith guided his life, according to the obituary. Every Sunday, Comperatore went to Cabot Church to pray. Then he often went hunting, fishing or walking his two Dobermans, said his brother, Steve Warheit.
MAGA politics was his other passion. He loved Trump, Warheit said, and had been thrilled to attend Saturday’s rally. Minutes into Trump’s campaign speech, gunfire shattered that joy. Helen told Rep. Josh Shapiro (D) that Comperatore threw himself at his wife and daughters and died trying to protect them.
“Corey was the best of us,” Shapiro said at a news conference this week near the Butler Farm Show, a rural venue known for its tractor-pulling contests and funnel cakes before the assassination attempt.
The gunman, shot dead at the scene, was a 20-year-old man who had driven from a suburb near Pittsburgh. Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican, had climbed to the top of the American Glass Research building, outside the rally’s security perimeter, and crouched on its sloping roof with an AR-style rifle. He fired eight shots, authorities said, killing Comperatore, critically wounding two other concertgoers and wounding Trump in the right ear.
Three days later, Trump called Comperatore’s widow to check on her, she wrote on Facebook. (Biden had been the first leader to call, she told the New York Post, but she declined to speak to him because (her husband’s political views.)
“He was very kind,” she wrote of Trump, “and said he would continue to call me in the days and weeks to come.”
Helen called Lt. Col. John Placek, 76, to install a special electronic billboard outside Thursday’s rally, he said, surveying his work. (People in town know he has a few, he added.)
“Praying for Corey Comperatore and his family,” read the billboard, which showed a photo of Comperatore next to an illustration of Jesus placing his hands on Trump’s shoulders.
“For something like this to happen…” Placek said, not speaking. “America is in danger.”
In this part of western Pennsylvania — a Republican stronghold dotted with Trump signs — residents have been gathering all week in churches, restaurants and gardens.
They gathered Wednesday night for a candlelight vigil at Lernerville Speedway, a dirt track near Comperatore’s birthplace. Despite the rain, hundreds of people perched on the damp bleachers, holding votive candles or lighting their own. mobile phones.
“This is not a political event,” organizer Kelly McCollough told the crowd. “There is no room for hate here.”
Marissa Timko, a 25-year-old veterinary technician wearing a Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company hoodie, nodded.
She had gone to high school with Comperatore’s daughter, Kaylee, and they were both cheerleaders. One day, after a football game, a few girls needed a ride home, so Kaylee called her dad.
Timko said she will never forget that moment: Comperatore pulling up in his blue Ford pickup, ready to play chauffeur, even though the cheerleaders lived in opposite directions.
“He would do anything for his daughters,” she said.
Had they been listening to country music that night? Christian rock? Timko didn’t remember, but Kaylee had once told him that Comperatore’s favorite song was “I Can Only Imagine,” a tearful MercyMe song about reaching heaven. So as soon as she heard the news, she commissioned a glass art piece for her old friend with these lyrics:
Will I dance for you, Jesus?
Or stand still in fear of you?
A few rows away, Jessica Day clasped her hands in prayer. Comperatore attended her church, the 48-year-old nurse said. He was there every Sunday, in the pews with his family. Although Day didn’t know him well, she said, she could tell he was devoted to Jesus.
“But even if you don’t believe in God, you can believe in this,” she said, gesturing to friends, neighbors and strangers who had trudged through the pouring rain.
She was wearing a pink hoodie, which she had bought at a fundraiser for a local teenager who had suffered a brain injury.
“That’s what we do here,” she said. “We come together.”
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News Source : www.washingtonpost.com
