Devoted Civilian Earned His Stripes
In 1994, 10 Fairchild Air Force Base personnel were honored as heroes for combating Dean Mellberg’s mid-June rampage that left four dead and 22 injured.
They deserved it, particularly Senior Airman Andrew Philip Brown, who fired a miraculous pistol shot that killed Mellberg from 70 yards away.
As it handed out medals, however, the military overlooked a brave man: Omer Karns of Rathdrum, “the forgotten victim.” He was the only victim that deadly June 20 who wasn’t connected to the military in any way, other than by his desire to serve his country. In fact, his lone role in the shooting was to take a bullet in the back that shattered his spleen and left him clinging to life for weeks. Yet, Karns, who died Friday at age 73, was every inch a hero - to the hearing impaired, to disabled veterans, to his friends and family. Deaf since childhood, Karns’ irrepressible smile and good humor broke down barriers for the handicapped; his courage in the face of hardship showed us how to live.
On the day he was shot, Karns was 69, an age when most of us are retired and thinking about our comfort rather than others’. But Karns was far from a rocking chair. He’d just dropped off a North Idaho veteran for a medical appointment at the Fairchild hospital. His joy in life was driving a van for the Disabled American Veterans. After he recovered from his life-threatening wound, Karns would joke about being a disabled American volunteer instead of a veteran.
He had tried to serve his country in the traditional way after the bombing at Pearl Harbor. He passed all the tests to enlist but was booted out when someone from behind him tried to start a conversation. Only then did the military discover his deafness.
No one would have blamed this patriot if he had decided to take it easy after the shooting. Instead, within three months he was walking with a cane and driving the DAV van again. Six months later, he was sidelined for awhile when he had his colostomy reversed. A year later, he buried his son, who died of cancer.
Through it all, he never lost his cheerfulness or his will to live. And he refused to listen to friends and relatives who urged him to sue everyone - from the Air Force to the DAV.
“Oh, I might sue for $2 so I can get some coffee,” he joked once during a break from driving the van. “No. I won’t even do that. The Air Force has been too good to me.”
Such love for neighbor and country will be sorely missed in this hard-boiled age.