CountrySide/Cascades

By Kathie Felix

In War Time: Capt. Garrett Lawton, a 31-year-old Marine aviator and the son of former CountrySide Quilter Cathy Sampson Peters, was killed Aug. 4 in Herat province, Afghanistan, following an improvised explosive attack.

Capt. Lawton was serving the final days of his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was a well-liked and respected officer who had earned a long list of decorations including the Bronze Star with Valor and two Purple Hearts. Lawton previously served as a flyer in Iraq.

He had been married to his wife, Trisha, for eight years and was the father of two beautiful sons -- Ryan, age 6, and Caden, age 2. In a memorial Web site posting, fellow Marine Ed Walsh wrote that “Tubes” Lawton “was madly in love with his wife, and his children were the center of his world.”

Garrett Lawton was born in Beaufort, S.C., and lived there until the age of 4. He grew up in a variety of locations related to the Marine deployment of his stepfather, Cal Peters. During one of the family’s two tours of duty in Northern Virginia, Lawton and his sister, Kenna, attended Herndon High School. He graduated from West Virginia University.

In 1999, Peters commissioned Lawton in the U.S. Marine Corps in front of the Iowa Jima memorial in Arlington. In 2003, Lawton retired Peters from the Marine Corps at Beaufort, S.C.

In an online memorial, Peters wrote, “Garrett was my fellow Marine Corps officer, the finest man I ever knew, my best friend, and my son. Garrett was an ideal boy who never once even argued with either his mother or me. He was good looking, bright (two engineering degrees), talented, a great husband and father, and a superb officer.”

Services were held at the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, S.C., on Aug. 14. The memorial included a fly-over by his former squadron in a missing-man formation and a 21-gun salute. A memorial service will be held at Arlington National Ceremony on a date yet to be determined.

Donations in Garrett’s memory may be made to the Wounded Warrior Project, www.woundedwarriorproject.org.

Many Loudoun quilters got to know Garrett’s mother, Cathy, during her family’s most recent tour of duty in the D.C. area in the late 1990s through 2005. During that time, Cathy Peters was a member of the CountrySide Quilters and worked at the now-closed Memere’s Garden fabric store in Leesburg’s Market Station.

Cathy and Cal Peters currently live in Jacksonville, Fla., where Cathy works at The Old Green Cupboard quilt shop. Cathy’s daughter, Kenna, has been out of the Air Force for a few months and is married to former CountrySide-area resident Paul Hubai; they now live in western Florida.