Jerry Stump, father: Adrian should have been on this trip. That was the plan. As soon as he was home from Afghanistan, we were going to the mountains in northeast Oregon. We've gone there since the kids were small. We mapped out this trip for years, wanted to do it, but Adrian could never be there. One year he was out of the country, one year he was in flight school in Alabama, one year he was training in Virginia. But this was going to be the summer for us to do it. After Adrian was killed, we wanted to do it for him, and for us, I guess.
Most of us took something of Adrian's on the trip, or something he gave us. I took a flask that Adrian bought me in Kazakhstan. It was going to be his Christmas present to me. He never missed being home on Christmas, and he'd bought all of us Christmas presents. They were in his locker over there.
Anyway, I took that flask. Anne (Adrian's mother) had Adrian's camouflage hat, Uncle Joe had a University of Oregon sweat shirt Adrian gave him. Riley (Adrian's brother) had a watch Adrian had bought for this trip. It had an altimeter and all kinds of fancy stuff.
We brought sunflower seeds that Anne had sent to him in a care package. I don't know what all she sent in that package --Skittles? --he was just a kid, you know. But he was dead before the package got there. That box traveled around the world to him, and then back to us; so we brought the sunflower seeds on the trip and ate them as we fished and sat around the campfire.
The Chinooks are based right here in Pendleton. Adrian grew up hearing them; we all hear them. I work on Airport Road, and I see them every day. They hover every day; so there's no getting away from them. I don't know how to say it . . . he should be flying them. He should be out fighting fire from that Chinook. Anytime I see one pass, I have to drop what I'm doing and watch it. You can't house anger and lose it every time they pass. I just have to tell myself that it's what he loved to do.