LIBBY - More than 100 Libby residents stepped inside Monday, out of the drear on a day that smelled of winter, and met, in the lobby of a local church, J.R. Stright.

There was Stright with a bib, and with a baby bottle, and buried in sand at the beach, in school photos and vacation snapshots, surrounded always by family.

Stright the awkward pre-teen, in a tie and a vest, wearing thick glasses. Stright the confident soldier, glasses replaced by slick black goggles betraying nothing of the gentle eyes behind.

J.R. Stright - Army Staff Sgt. James R. Stright - died on Oct. 23, the only fatality in a military training accident that injured a half-dozen others.

He was a member of the Night Stalkers, a special operations unit, with 16 deployments and literally dozens of medals, ribbons and commendations, and he was buried here Monday.

"Service in the 160th is a calling only a few will answer," says the Night Stalkers' creed, "for the mission is constantly demanding and hard. And when the impossible has been accomplished the only reward is another mission that no one else will try."

Noble words, but meager comfort for friends and family who came to say goodbye.

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They gathered in a church born of Libby, with trophy mounts of deer and elk where, in other churches, saints would be. Up front and center a brilliant splash of red and white and blue painted the drab hues of the pulpit, and beneath that flag a casket - quiet, still, heavy.

It was flanked by large photographs - one of civilian Stright with his dog Lucia, and one of soldier Stright, straight-backed and serious. But in both could be found the face of a Libby kid, a comfortable rural ease, a competence born of folks who know how to take care of their own.

They remembered a man quiet and caring, a man of courage and integrity and respect. Loyal. Dutiful.

"He earned his rank," said Chaplain Cary Snelling. "And he didn't just wear it."

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Stright joined the Army straight out of Libby High School in 1998, son of an Army man and proud of it. He seemed taller than his six-foot-one, lean and muscular and handsome.

"A damn fine soldier," his father said after the accident. "The elite of the elite."

Stright, a member of a special ops aviation unit, was part of a Black Hawk helicopter crew that crashed on a Navy ship off the Virginia coast. Navy officials told the Strights that service members were rappelling down a rope from the helicopter to the USNS Arctic when the helicopter crashed into the vessel.

Officials said the exercise was practice for soldiers to board, search and seize ships that might be under control of pirates or terrorists; the Arctic, they said, was chosen because it has features similar to merchant ships.

That's pretty much all they know of how he died. His missions were his own, and though his family knew he was a helicopter mechanic and a crew chief, they often had no idea what he was doing, or where in the world he was doing it.

"I guard my unit's mission with secrecy," the Night Stalker creed states, "for my only true ally is the night and the element of surprise. ... Secrecy is a way of life."

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The brash call of bagpipes left no question that this was a full military funeral, their insistent drone washing out the gentleness of a guitar played in some minor key. Outside, the wind blew leaden clouds while Snelling read from Psalms 91, the "Soldiers' Psalm" - "Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day."

Flowers, like tiny suns, blazed from the pulpit, clipped too soon, and so far out of season.

Stright had loved to cook, said pastor Phil Alspaw, and to learn, and leaned toward Harley Davidsons and online gaming and his faithful German shepherd. He had a passion for people he loved, and for people he'd never met.

A warrior. And a peacekeeper.

Member of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), headquartered at Hunter Army Airfield, Ga.

But more, too. A son. A friend. A laugh and a smile now lost.

People rose, applauded in a standing ovation, "an opportunity," Alspaw said, "to say thank you."

And at graveside, in the shadow of the snowy Cabinet Mountains where Stright had hiked and hunted as a boy, the sun finally emerged, and long late-season shadows stretched across the grass, reaching from his family's feet to darken the casket, and seven rifles fired at once, and a bugle sang taps.

Stright's father, the soldier, cried and saluted, and his mother clutched the folded flag, held it cradled to her chest as she once cradled her boy, so long ago, before the glasses and the goggles.

A helicopter circled. "We'll miss him," a soldier whispered over the unbroken throb of its rotors. "Everyone will miss him."

Reach reporter Michael Jamison at 1-800-366-7186 or by e-mail at mjamison@missoulian.com.