HERB BENHAM: 'Sleep with the angels': Reis family finds peace
| Saturday, Jan 14 2012 06:29 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Jan 14 2012 08:10 PM
Images
The Reis siblings spell out their family name on a beach in San Diego during a Christmas get-together.
The Reis family from left, Melanie, Mark, Patti, Tom and a portrait of Karen and David.
With everyone contributing, the Reis kitchen was a blur of activity as family and friends prepared dinner. Tom Reis is at top center and his wife, Patti, is at far left.
Mary Reis, center, and sister-in-law Mary Lu Reis hold one another as dinner is fixed at the Reis house. Andy Reis is at right.
Kathleen Kretzmer, Mark Reis, Melanie Reis and Sam Hosey look at photos of Karen and David Reis (seen in photos at top right). Kretzmer and Hosey were high school friends of Karen.
Looking at photographs while the adults fix dinner are, from left, Melanie Reis, sister of David and Karen, and Jen King, Sam Hosey and Kathleen Kretzmer, all friends of Karen, and Mark Reis, Karen and David's brother.
Patti Reis and her husband, Tom, (cooking at left) are in the kitchen preparing dinner with family and friends.
Pictures of Karen and David Reis, along with flowers, cover a table in the entryway of the Reis home.
Since the death of her brother and sister two weeks ago, Melanie Reis talks to them a lot.
"David is laughing at you," Melanie told her father.
"Tell Mom I really, really love her," Melanie said to her mother, about a conversation she had with Karen.
Not every death draws our attention. Perhaps not yours, not mine, but these. If you have children, have been part of a family or have an ounce of compassion, it has been hard to not want to reach out across the street, neighborhood and nation and grab the Reis family in your arms and hold on.
Early New Year's Day, Tom and Patty Reis' two elder children -- 25-year-old David, a Navy fighter pilot; and Karen, a 24-year-old UCSD graduate -- were gunned down in a tragedy that left two others dead, one by suicide.
Nobody knows why. But for the Reises, "why" has taken a back seat to cinching the family knot tighter.
I met with the family on Monday for four hours at the house they built in Rosedale 19 years ago. Both
Patty and Tom are engineers -- Tom with Chevron -- though Patty left the profession years ago to become a lactation consultant at Memorial Hospital.
The Reises and their younger children, Mark and Melanie, were joined by extended family and friends for a dinner that included chicken piccata (David's favorite), red, white and blue salad (Karen's favorite) and potatoes. Who doesn't like potatoes?
The Reises chose to celebrate New Year's Eve together in Bakersfield on Dec. 30 because David had to return to the base the next day. The Reises had pork chops, red, white and blue salad and watched the "The Guns of Navarone," as was their family tradition. David left at 1 p.m. New Year's Eve but before he did, Tom suggested that they wash his car, an M-3 BMW, something all three of the Reis men did together. They took pictures in front of the car and David zoomed off, as if catapulted from a slingshot.
On Jan. 1, Tom drove Melanie and her roommate, Courtney Shipp, back to school at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, spent 15 minutes with her and then returned home.
Patty stayed in Bakersfield and was watching TV when she saw the news flash that four people had been shot to death in San Diego. She turned on her computer and discovered that San Diego meant Coronado and that the address of the crime scene matched David's.
Patty called Tom's parents, Andy and Alice. She sent Mark on an errand while she gathered her thoughts.
She then called Lynn Johnson, her boss at Memorial.
"I'm not coming to work tomorrow," she said.
"Why?" Johnson asked.
"I think two of my children are dead."
At close to 5 p.m., there was a knock. Three Navy men in their dress blues stood at her door.
"Are you Patricia?" one said. "Your son, David, died of fatal gunshot wounds."
"I knew when they called me Patricia that something was wrong," Patty said. "The way they said Patricia -- a name I normally hate -- was so respectful."
Tom hadn't returned from San Luis, so Patty asked if the men would stay another 30 minutes until her husband arrived.
"Ma'am, we'll stay all night if you want us to."
Tom got home at 5:50 and saw a car he did not recognize parked in the driveway, which prevented him from backing into the garage, standard operating procedure for the Reises (a Chevron safety rule).
"Patty met me at the door, helped me put everything down and then she turned me toward the three Navy personnel," Tom said.
The Reises immediately decided to drive back to San Luis to pick up Melanie. They didn't want her to hear the news from somebody else. Tom called his friend Jim Mosher and asked if he would drive.
Melanie and her roommate were watching "The Goonies" when the Reises knocked on their door at 10:15 p.m. Mark, Patty and Tom walked in arm in arm.
"It was hard to walk in and see your happy face," Patty told Melanie later.
Melanie's response swung between disbelief and "Who in the f... would do something like this?"
SHARING MEMORIES
At the funeral, Karen was described by her friends Kathleen Kretzmer and Rebecca Bailey as "organized chaos. She could be talking on the phone, wrapping your present, and writing in your card while driving to your birthday lunch. When she got there, your gift was beautifully wrapped, your card was eloquently written, and her time was completely devoted to you. Nobody mattered more to her than you at that moment."
Karen was also a handful for Patty in the way that spirited young girls often are. Her mother was relieved when Karen graduated and went to college. Having inherited the Reis engineering mind, Karen, a multitasker, coached volleyball and worked at Trader Joe's at the time of her death, and was intense, brilliant, loyal and mercurial.
Taking her role as an older sister and mentor to heart, Karen was passionate about Melanie, who followed her in volleyball both at Garces and the Kern River Volleyball Club. For Melanie's 18th birthday, Karen made a book called "Eighteen Reasons I Love You."
"Karen was a dork who would sing a cappella with me at the top of her lungs," Melanie said. "She was No. 1 on my speed dial and we had already planned to be maids of honor at each other's weddings."
Karen had an equally strong bond with her older brother, David. On Dec 22, during David's first and only flight in the F/A-18 Hornet, he flew over the Trader Joe's in La Jolla with Karen in the parking lot corralling carts.
"Karen was screaming and jumping up and down and saying, 'that's my brother,'" Tom said. "'He is a jet pilot. He has his wings.'"
LIVING LIFE LARGE
David flew fast, drove fast and "found adventure where there was none." In high school, David's Bible had an F-15 on the front cover, an F-22 on the back and a picture of a white Corvette tucked inside next to Scripture. A day after graduating from the University of New Mexico, where he was in ROTC, he was commissioned as an officer in the Navy, first flying a Cessna, then a T-34, T-45 and finally the F/A-18 Hornet. After time in Pensacola, Corpus Christi and Kingsville, Texas, he applied to the Naval Air Station Lemoore and the Marine Corps Station Miramar for F/A-18 training.
"Lemoore was his first choice because he wanted to fly in canyons, over valleys and cross ridge lines," Tom said. "It was more exciting than flying over the ocean."
In San Diego, David invited his sister for dinner every Monday evening. Karen attended a church called the Rock, and if David missed the service, she'd tape it, insist he watch it and follow it with a quiz.
David lived to fly. Wing to wing with a pilot with whom he would team up in a dogfight later that day, David did canopy rolls back and forth over the other aircraft as if they were dolphins. On his inaugural flight in the F/A-18 Hornet, he forgot that his radio was on and after exhausting every conceivable kind of maneuver possible, he said, "Holy s..., I'm flying a Hornet."
"Yes, you are, son," his flight instructor said.
David's quote was written on the cap panel inside his coffin, which caused a stir in the church and with the funeral director.
SPIRITUAL STRENGTH
Patty talks about "the God thing," in describing the last four months:
David and Karen ended up in San Diego and were able to spend the fall together.
During Thanksgiving, Karen stormed out of the house after an argument with Patty's sister. David drove after her and brought her home.
"That night David came into our room and dressed us down for the way we were treating Karen," Patty said. "He said, 'Karen needs something that you are not giving her. She will never ask for it, but you need to reconsider.' He was her protector, even with her parents."
Patty and Tom ended up crying in each other's arms. The next day, Karen and her mother chipped away at the problem. They made a pact and agreed to move toward a common goal, and when they veered off track, to tell each other.
"That would have never happened without David," Patty said. "If we hadn't had that moment of relationship repair, I would be feeling really guilty today."
In San Diego on Christmas Eve, David took his family on a tour of Miramar. He showed them the flight simulators, gave them a tour of the hangar and showed them the F/A-18 he had flown. They ordered pizza and ate it on the base. The Reises shared Christmas dinner with David's roommate, Bob Reeves, and his mother, Rita -- just days before Reeves would end his own life and possibly that of the siblings as well.
The Reises also went to the beach Christmas evening, where a snapshot was taken of the children each forming one of the four letters that spell their last name. The siblings played keep-away. Mark ended up in the water.
FAMILY VALUES
Though the warm tributes to their children give the Reises a measure of solace, they've sensed a tendency by some people to portray them as a perfect family, as if that fact would make the tragedy even more horrific and incomprehensible.
"We want the world to know we have exceptional kids, but we're not Ward and June Cleaver," Patty said. "We have a 19-year-old who thinks she can run the world and a testosterone-crazed 17-year-old. We want to allow ourselves to be what we used to be."
No, they're not perfect, just close-knit, just brave and just singled out for some cosmic lesson of which they are trying to make sense.
The children attended Garces but the expense of a private education didn't mean the Reises weren't frugal. No fancy cars for the children on their 16th birthdays.
The boys were Eagle Scouts (Mark is closing in on his) and the girls played volleyball. The Reises are wine drinkers, occasionally use colorful language and last year bought season passes to Disneyland because this group likes to sing Disney songs, ride the Toy Story Midway Mania in California Adventure, and entertain one another with different accents and voices, mostly from the family's favorite current movie, "Despicable Me."
TOUGH TIMES
The week before the funeral was a blur. Patty was receiving Facebook messages every three seconds and got another 500 text messages from friends, family and mothers at WarmLine, where she has volunteered for 15 years.
Melanie turned into a master organizer (she said she was offered seven jobs over the course of the week) and enlisted friends, whom she called her "minions" in a nod to "Despicable Me." There were two or three committee meetings a day at the Reis house, and it was common to have nine laptops going at once.
Friends offered rooms and houses to family members and out-of-town guests. Jim Burke Ford provided two cars, Chevron paid for three rooms. There were logistical challenges at almost every stage that worked out, in Patty's estimation, because of the God thing.
"We did not want the children separated," Tom said. "We wanted them brought back to Bakersfield together. With help from the Navy and Greenlawn, they made the trip home with a military escort."
Before leaving San Diego, Marine Corps Capt. Dan Knutson, noticed that David's coffin did not have a flag. He bought one, draped it over the coffin and then presented it to the family Saturday night after the funeral.
Funeral dress was another potential challenge. San Diego detectives who flew to Bakersfield to interview the family were persuaded to go to the condo and bring David's dress whites, photos and cardboard wings he had constructed as a child, along with a unicorn that Karen made for her brother for Halloween from a blue toilet brush and ping pong balls. A pair of white 14D shoes appeared on the front porch days before the funeral, a gift from a different base in San Diego.
Karen wore a white turtleneck that Melanie bought at Target, Melanie's navy blue sweater, an olive-colored scarf, Adidas volleyball shoes with a red ribbon tied on from her senior season at Garces, Melanie's white Mickey Mouse crew socks and black spandex shorts.
At the memorial at Garces a week ago Friday, the ceremony went so long that Patty thought "that David and Karen would appear on the stage shortly to receive an award."
The next day at the funeral, Patty wore the sparkly black dress her daughters had bought for her at Macy's the day after Christmas. They had also encouraged Patty to buy another dress, which she wore to the Rosary. "Another God thing."
It didn't matter what time people arrived for the funeral because no time was early enough. The family printed 600 programs and ran out.
There was a picture of David and Karen together as toddlers on the front of the program and a quote from Leonardo da Vinci that read, "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
The cap panel inside Karen's coffin read, "Sleep with the angels -- You too," an exchange Patty and her daughter had every night before bed when Karen was a child.
At the graveside service, Melanie stuck out her tongue when she was handed a dove, which each of the family members released after the count of four. Afterwards, the family huddled and chanted "R-E-I-S" out loud.
DINNER GATHERING
More than 20 years ago, the Reis family was visiting John Segerstrom, a friend at the Ventura Marina. Karen fell off the dock, and David jumped in to rescue her. David was 6, Karen was 5. Tom rescued them both.
"On New Year's Day, David tried to rescue her again," Segerstrom said of David's attempt to climb the stairs of the condo when the gunfire started.
At the chicken piccata dinner Monday night, Mark wore a black T-shirt that read, "I believe." That sentiment speaks for the family.
"We feel lucky to be a family of four rather than a family of zero," Patty said.
Melanie saved a message from Karen, who was giving her a pep talk before a big game. The voice mail, delivered in a delirious soprano and at Mach 7 speed said, "Love you, love you, love you, love you. Give it your all, play for each other and have the time of your life."
At the Rosary, Melanie leaned over her brother's coffin. She smiled. "Please take me flying in my dreams," she said.
These are Herb Benham's opinions, and not necessarily The Californian's. His column appears Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Call him at 395-7279 or write hbenham@bakersfield.com.
