Nathan White, LDS Pilot Shot Down Over Iraq,
Buried at Arlington
An Exclusive Photographic Essay
Photography by Scot Facer Proctor
Essay by Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photos from family files used by permission
All Arlington Photographs Copyright 2003 Scot Facer Proctor
(Use of any photographs herein only by written permission of Meridian Magazine)

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Part 4

The Martyns of Orlando wrote:

“He said that although he loved flying, he was sure he would be jealous of me and my job as a programmer while he was all alone for months at a time.

“Still, he believed in what he was doing, and looked forward to a future as an airline pilot once he left the Navy. He had to leave early the next morning, but being the gentleman, he left a kind note for us, thanking us for our hospitality.“

Those who knew Nate had a variety of nicknames for him, suggesting the easy, connected friendships that marked his life. In one elementary school class, he was “Nate the Great.”

Among his friends at the MTC, they called him “Iceman,” because they thought he looked like the star of Top Gun. Many Navy friends referred to him as “Juice.” The Navy news reports called him Nathan “O. J.” White.

His friends said, “A more noble sweet and honest man you will never find.”

On that mile walk the white markers of the dead stretched in every direction in neat rows like silent soldiers standing to attention.

Down in valleys, climbing hills the stones march, and they are not just a compelling sight, a monument to sacrifice for freedom.

If this one burial which we are accompanying today is the story of a man who left too soon, whose integrity, charm, gumption and love are snuffed out with such pain, how many, many stories are represented here at Arlington?

We marvel at the price Akiko will pay for a lifetime without Nate, about the times Austin will want to have a father at Scout camp or Zach might cry himself to sleep.

How many of these markers had the tears of children and widows behind them as their sweethearts went to fight for a cause larger than themselves?

Click here to go to Part Five of Nathan White’s Burial at Arlington.

Click here to go to Part Five of
Nathan White’s Burial at Arlington

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