Fallen hero honored in song

The word “shepherd” lodged itself firmly in Jamie Schilken's head.

A friend of Sgt. Justin Duffy had used that word to describe the Cozad, Neb., soldier after he died last month in Baghdad. Duffy, a part-time bouncer at a Kearney bar, had always taken away the keys of friends who had downed too many beers. He'd broken up fights.

He had protected people from each other and from themselves.

Shepherd — the word rattled around in Schilken's brain even as she and her two sisters performed gigs with their longtime Omaha band, Mulberry Lane.

It stuck with her as she took a family vacation to Colorado, bringing with her all the newspaper stories she could find about Duffy.

And it's the reason she wrote her first solo song, recorded it until 3 a.m. one night and e-mailed it to Joe and Janet Duffy, Justin's parents.

That song, “The Shepherd,” is now getting airplay on central Nebraska radio stations. On Sunday, Schilken will perform the song live for the first time.

She will sing “The Shepherd” at Sgt. Duffy's memorial service in Cozad.

“When I read about him, he just seemed like such a good guy, a real good Nebraska type of guy,” Schilken said Thursday. “I got really emotional when I wrote it. My early drafts have tear stains all over them.”

Duffy, 31, died in eastern Baghdad on June 2, when the Humvee he was driving struck a roadside bomb. The U.S. Army sergeant, who provided escort security for high-ranking Army officers, became the first Nebraskan to die in Iraq in nearly two years.

His death has already been mourned at a funeral service in Moline, Ill., where he was born.

The Cozad memorial service will be at 1 p.m. at Cozad High School, where Duffy received his high school diploma.

Employees from the Tenneco manufacturing plant in Cozad, where Joe Duffy has long worked, will be there. So will Sgt. Duffy's former co-workers at a Kearney manufacturing plant and his buddies from the Kearney bar Cunningham's Journal.

And Jamie Schilken will be there, even though she never met Sgt. Duffy and had no connection to his family and friends before she wrote her song.

Now she knows small details of his life. How he loved to smoke Marlboro Reds. How he dreamed of traveling to Ireland, his ancestors' homeland. She put the details in her song, and then she imagined herself at his funeral, watching as children wave flags and salute.

“The Shepherd, from the Heartland, returns today,” she sings.

The Omaha songwriter received an e-mail reply this week from Janet Duffy, the sergeant's mother, who wrote that she was touched. She wrote that the song was beautiful. She wrote that Schilken had “caught the essence of our son in just a few short words.”

“Thank you so very much from deep within my heart,” she said.

Schilken said she was proud to accept the invitation to sing at Sgt. Duffy's memorial service. She's worried only that she'll start to cry when she begins to sing. She doesn't want to lose it, can't lose it, when she's singing, “A Shepherd from the Heartland returns today,” to the people who loved him.

Contact the writer:

444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com