Page 39 - October Newsletter

everyone in the City.”
April 22, 2011, provided perhaps the greatest image of the hero
Bernie had become. The Chicago Police Memorial Foundation ar- ranged for Bernie to throw out the first pitch at a Cubs game against the Dodgers.
They weren’t winning a lot of games back then, so Wrigley wasn’t exactly full. But when Bernie was wheeled out to the pitcher’s mound, Adam recalls everybody in the stadium standing up and cheering, a confirmation that “they knew he wasn’t a celebrity, but they knew he was a hero.”
And when Bernie let the pitch go, the Wrigley faithful erupted as if Rizzo went deep. In the World Series.
“You never heard such a loud applause for a ball that made it halfway to home plate,” Craig elates. “I think they just wanted to show their respect.”
The ultimate respect for police officers, of course, comes from police officers, and that feel-good moment for Bernie came about seven years ago when he was moving from the brain injury facility he had been at in Carbondale to an assisted living residence in Chi- cago. When the ambulance transporting him arrived and Bernie’s stretcher was pulled out of the back, he saw nearly 50 officers lined up to greet him. They formed lines leading up to the entrance like a red carpet, and each officer shook Bernie’s hand as he passed.
“It meant so much to him,” Craig confides. “And it meant so much to us.”
The Line of Duty Death is so sacred that police officers some- times come from around the world to pay their respects at the fu- neral. But the Line of Duty Death that befell Bernie Domagala com- manded a hero’s farewell of epic proportions.
The Department posted two officers at Bernie’s casket from his passing to his burial four days later. The honor guard rotated every 20 minutes. K9 units came to the church because Bernie was such a dog lover.
The streets to the cemetery were lined with police officers, and Chicago Fire Department ladder trucks were posted at the entrance flying huge American flags. Hundreds of cadet officers waited at the cemetery for the funeral procession to arrive, and the way they stood at attention left Adam with a feeling his family had been needing for 29 years. “This ultimate high honor gave us closure,” he revealed.
Denise imparted how the funeral provided a greater tribute than she could have ever imagined. She knew how the SWAT vehicles escorting the funeral procession would have made Bernie feel so good. She knew how the church filled with row after row of police officers showed just how big their police family had grown in 29 years. She couldn’t believe the way residents of the city lined the streets and saluted as the procession passed.
“I had no idea the City was so full of appreciation for everything he had done,” Denise accentuates. “And he really deserved it.”
Bernie’s legacy has been secure for 29 years. His family has been secure for 29 years as well. As soon as he was shot, Garza notes that the HBT Unit promised to look out for them.
Both the legacy and the family bore an elevated sense of rever- ence when the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation (CPMF) was founded in 2001. The CPMF’s mission of providing for families of fallen and catastrophically injured officers seemed to be set with Bernie in mind.
For so many years, the Domagala house was a memorable stop during the CPMF’s Operation Santa run every Christmas. From Gold Star Memorial events to CPMF runs, there are so many pic- tures of Bernie, Denise and the boys with Bernie in some type of official capacity. And Bernie is always smiling.
“Throughout everything, the Memorial Foundation was so much bigger to us than we could have ever imagined,” Erik verifies.
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