TACOMA, Wash. - Top federal officials, fellow park rangers and thousands of well-wishers gathered in Tacoma Tuesday to celebrate the life of Margaret Anderson, a Mount Rainier National Park ranger who was fatally shot on New Year's Day.
A funeral procession of law enforcement vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks and other emergency service vehicles left the Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood Tuesday morning and arrived at Pacific Lutheran University for the memorial.
Later, hundreds of rangers, police officers and others stood at attention and saluted, as Anderson's family and friends followed her flag-draped casket into the auditorium.
"Our nation has lost a good and brave ranger," U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said during the memorial. "This crime seems so senseless. We know there are no words that neither the governor, nor I, nor (her father), nor anyone could say today that would bring an understanding to what happened or solace that would be immediate. "
Anderson's father said Margaret Anderson said the dedication she showed on that Sunday was not an anomaly.
"That was Margaret," said Pastor Paul Kritsch. "We were, and always will be very proud of her."
Kritsch said Anderson loved playing out in the woods behind their Connecticut home with her brother and sister. "That was very much where she developed her love for the outdoors."
Anderson, a 34-year-old mother of two young girls, was shot and killed after setting up a roadblock to stop a vehicle that blew through a checkpoint on the road to the park's visitor center. The driver of that vehicle shot Anderson in her car and ran away, authorities said.
Searchers found the body of the suspect, 24-year-old Iraq war veteran Benjamin Colton Barnes, in a snowy creek. An autopsy showed he died of hypothermia and drowning.
Officials praised her bravery and said she and fellow park rangers' actions saved lives.
"National Park Ranger Margaret Anderson is a hero -- not because she died, but because of why she died -- to keep visitors safe," said National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis. "Her loss reverberates across the lives of all those she loved and millions of the other people across the country who have come to know her in these last few days."
Anderson had served as a ranger at Mount Rainier for three years. She was married to another ranger, Eric Anderson, who was on duty elsewhere in the park when she was killed.
The daughter of a Lutheran minister, Anderson grew up in New Jersey and earned a bachelor's degree in fisheries and wildlife from Kansas State University and a master's degree in biology from Fort Hays State University in Kansas, according to media reports.
She began working with the National Park Service as a law enforcement ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, where she met her husband. She also worked as a law enforcement park ranger at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park in Maryland.
"We lost her way too soon," said Robert Danno, Anderson's first chief ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah. "She will always be my hero in life and in death.
"Rest now Margaret. There is a special place in heaven for heroes."
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