Family remembers Melrose graduate killed in military training

Carolyn McLemore leaned forward on the sofa of her Orange Mound home, one hand holding a cell phone, the other covering her face.

The voice over the speaker issued condolences.

McLemore had questions. Where was her son’s body? When would he be returned to her?

The man on the phone provided some answers, detailing a journey to the coroner’s office escorted by lights and sirens. Standard procedure for a fallen soldier, he said.

McLemore hung up the phone and released a few sobs.

“I just heard, ‘fallen soldier,’” she said.

It was a term she knew. A term she knew could one day be applied to her son, her 25-year-old, second-eldest child who took summer school classes to graduate early from Melrose High and join the military.

She just never imagined it could happen like this.

Army Reserve Specialist Cayln McLemore died this week during a training exercise at Camp Blanding Joint Training Center. He was missing for two days before search teams found his body Friday.

According to the Florida National Guard, McLemore was taking part in a leadership course with an Alabama Army Reserve unit when he went missing around 11 a.m. Wednesday.

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office announced Friday his body had been found in a wooded area.

“This now becomes an undetermined death investigation,” the agency posted on Facebook.

A spokesperson for the department did not return a phone call Saturday.

Carolyn McLemore said she’s trying to piece together what happened. Her son was in top shape, she said, running and working out in a home gym and obsessed with staying hydrated. He had a wall of bottled water and Gatorade at his house. He’d been in the Army reserves seven years, participating in several of the same kind of training exercises.

She believes there must be some type of technology that would allow the military to track soldiers. “So this never happens again,” she said.

McLemore first learned of her son’s disappearance Thursday morning. She didn’t have a contact with the Army, so she started calling any agency she could think of, from Veterans Affairs to the Red Cross.

“I had to actually Google where he was,” she said. She finally spoke to the sheriff’s office, who told her a massive search was underway. She was told to stay put in Memphis, so she went to work to keep her mind busy before returning home, where she learned of her son’s death.

“I always had the thought of what you see in the movies, with two officers standing at the door, and you don’t want to answer the door,” McLemore said.

Two military representatives came to talk to her, she said, but it was a Memphis Police officer who broke the news. McLemore doesn’t know why the military didn’t tell her first.

Now, three days before he was to return home, she’s planning her son’s funeral. Cayln is the second son she will bury, after losing another son to suicide two years ago.

Cayln was the second child of five and the family protector, his mother said.

At the age of 10, while his mother worked evenings, Cayln walked to Wendy’s to bring home dinner for his sisters and other adult relatives who had disabilities and couldn’t leave the house.

“He was a superhero to me,” his sister, Cura McLemore, said.

He worked three jobs, including at Kroger, while serving in the military reserves and recently bought a house in Cordova. His grandmother helped him decorate it.

“It looks like an old lady lives there,” his sister said.

He was a “magnet,” his mother said, always drawing people to him. He listened to “grocery store” and “elevator” music, she joked, and he hated taking candid photographs.

“He was a snazzy dresser,” she said. “He wanted to be prepared for a picture.”

And so, knowing full well she would soon be photographed, Carolyn McLemore had her own hair done after learning of her son’s death.

“I still have to represent him,” she said.

Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer.pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.