By FREEPORT, Pa. — Friends, neighbors, strangers — they rose early Thursday to line the main drag of Corey Comperatore’s tiny hometown with knee-high American flags.
Firetrucks flanked the black van carrying his body up the country road to Laube Hall. Snipers kept watch on roofs.
No one knew how many mourners would roll into Freeport to say goodbye at a celebration here honoring his life. In the five days since Comperatore’s death at the Trump rally 20 miles away shocked the world, a GoFundMe page to support his family had raised more than $1 million. Friends, neighbors, strangers — they were all still processing it.
Now they streamed by the hundreds toward the first of two gatherings before Friday’s private funeral. Inside sat his coffin.
Comperatore, who had celebrated his 50th birthday last month, spent his life in this blue-collar community on the Allegheny River. He graduated from Freeport High School, home of the Yellowjackets, and married his former classmate, Helen. Together, they raised two daughters.
“The quintessential family man and the best girl dad,” his obituary said.
His cousin, 58-year-old Cindy Villella, had admired those fatherly qualities. That’s what came to mind when she thought of Comperatore: Doting dad.
“Just so sincere,” she said, walking into the gathering, “and so caring.”
She summed up her feelings in one word: Shock.
For nearly three decades, Comperatore worked at a plastics plant in the forested hills of Butler County, rising from maintenance supervisor to project engineer. In his spare time, he’d served in the U.S. Army Reserve and as a volunteer firefighter — “the first one running into a burning building,” recalled Kip Johnston, Buffalo Township’s fire chief.
His Christian faith guided his life, the obituary said. Every Sunday, Comperatore worshiped at Cabot Church. Then he was likely to be off hunting, fishing or walking his two Dobermans, said his brother, Steve Warheit.
MAGA politics was his other passion. He loved Trump, Warheit said, and had been thrilled to attend Saturday’s rally. Minutes into Trump’s stump speech, gunfire shattered that joy. Comperatore flung himself over his wife and daughters, Helen told Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), and died trying to protect them.
“Corey was the very best of us,” Shapiro said at a news conference this week near the Butler Farm Show, a rural venue known for tractor-pulling contests and funnel cake before the attempted assassination.
The gunman — shot dead at the scene — was a 20-year-old man who’d driven in from a nearby Pittsburgh suburb. Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican, had climbed atop the American Glass Research building outside the rally’s security perimeter and crouched on its slanted roof with an AR-style rifle. He fired eight shots, authorities said, killing Comperatore, gravely wounding two other spectators and injuring Trump’s right ear.
Three days later, Trump called Comperatore’s widow to check on her, she wrote on Facebook. (Biden had been the first leader to call, she’d told the New York Post, but she’d declined to speak with him because of her husband’s political views.)
“He was very kind,” she wrote of Trump, “and said he would continue to call me in the days and weeks ahead.”
Helen called Lt. Col. John Placek, 76, to erect a special electronic billboard outside Thursday’s gathering, he said while surveying his handiwork. (Folks in town know that he owns a few, he added.)
“Praying for Corey Comperatore & his family,” flashed the billboard, which displayed a photo of Comperatore next to an illustration of Jesus placing his hands on Trump’s shoulders.
“For something like this to happen …” Placek said, trailing off. “America is in trouble.”
Across this slice of western Pennsylvania — a Republican stronghold dotted with Trump signs — residents have gathered all week in churches, diners and backyards.
They huddled Wednesday evening for a candlelight vigil at the Lernerville Speedway, a dirt racetrack near Comperatore’s birthplace. Despite the rain, hundreds perched on the damp bleachers, clutching votive candles or lighting up their cellphones.
“This is not an event of a political nature,” the organizer, Kelly McCollough, told the crowd. “There is no room for hate here.”
Marissa Timko, a 25-year-old veterinary technician in a Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company hoodie, nodded along.
She’d gone to high school with Comperatore’s daughter, Kaylee, and they’d both been cheerleaders. Once, after a football game, a few of the girls needed a ride home, so Kaylee called her dad.
Timko said she’ll never forget it: Comperatore pulling up in his blue Ford pickup truck, ready to play chauffeur — even though the cheerleaders lived in opposite directions.
“He would do anything for his daughters,” she said.
Had they been listening that night to country music? Christian rock? Timko couldn’t remember, but Kaylee once told her that Comperatore’s favorite song was “I Can Only Imagine,” a tear-jerker by MercyMe about reaching heaven. So, as soon as she heard the news, she ordered glass art for her old friend featuring those lyrics:
Surrounded by Your glory
What will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you Jesus
Or in awe of You be still?
A few rows back, Jessica Day clasped her hands in prayer. Comperatore had attended her church, the 48-year-old nurse said. There he was, every Sunday, in the pews with his family. Though Day didn’t know him well, she said, she could tell that he was devoted to Jesus.
“But even if you don’t believe in God, you can believe in this,” she said, motioning to the friends, neighbors and strangers who had trudged out in a downpour.
She was wearing a pink hoodie, which she’d bought at a fundraiser for a teenage boy in town who’d suffered a brain injury.
“That’s what we do here,” she said. “We band together for each other.”