Marine Lance Cpl. Gavin R. Brummund, 22, Arnold; killed in explosion

His friends say he was the kind of person who inspired others to slow down and appreciate life. And that’s what people in Calaveras County did after Marine Lance Cpl. Gavin R. Brummund was killed in Afghanistan.

Thousands stood solemnly in tribute along California Highway 4 as the grieving families of Brummund and his young widow returned home after claiming the Marine’s body in Dover, Del.

Merchants in the little towns of Angels Camp, Avery, Copperopolis and Murphys closed their shops. Sheriff’s deputies and the California Highway Patrol stopped traffic as the family’s motorcade made its way through the rolling Sierra Nevada foothills.

Brummund, 22, of the community of Arnold, was killed June 10 by a remotely detonated bomb while leading a four-man rifle team back to camp after a night patrol in southern Helmand province, on the Pakistani border. Although he was treated promptly at the blast site and rushed by helicopter to a field hospital, he died of his injuries.

Assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Brummund served in Iraq from April to October 2008 and was sent to Afghanistan in January, according to a Marine Corps spokesman.

Brummund was scheduled to return to the United States in late summer.

He was the first serviceman from Calaveras County to die in combat since the Vietnam War, and his death touched many in the small communities nestled in the Stanislaus National Forest.

Another crowd lined the two-lane highway when Brummund’s remains were returned to the county June 18, and several thousand attended a memorial service at the county fairgrounds in Angels Camp the next day. His ashes were later interred at an Angels Camp cemetery in a private ceremony.

“He was a guy who could relate to anybody and saw the good in everyone,” said his wife of 21/2 years, Michaela. “He was the guy who brought a smile to everyone’s face just by being there. He was a beautiful man with a calm soul.”

His fellow Marines agreed. “He was always a guy who could make you laugh and kept you up when you really needed it,” said Cpl. Brandon Beasley, who served with Brummund.

Kevin Gause, stepfather of Michaela Brummund, recounted for those at the memorial service how he had initially tried to shoo the young man away after he met Michaela during the ninth grade at Bret Harte High School in Angels Camp. The pair became sweethearts in 2005 at the beginning of their senior year and married two years later.

“Since I first met Gavin and until now, Gavin has constantly been gaining my respect and love,” Gause said. “Gavin went from that boy that I wanted to chase away to a man, a godly man, who I loved with all my heart.”

Born Feb. 25, 1988, in Van Nuys, Brummund lived in Arnold for 18 years. He was an avid athlete who wrestled and played football in high school and relished floating on the family houseboat. He knew all the back roads in the local forests and navigated his 1977 Jeep Cherokee over them to get to secret fishing spots and swimming holes, according to friends.

“He was a little like Huck Finn. He hunted and fished and was a real Calaveras County boy,” said Pastor Ted Mustill of the Lake Tulloch Bible Church in Copperopolis, where Gavin and Michaela were married in December 2007.

Mustill said Brummund was the leader of a group of about a dozen young men from the county who enlisted in the military in early 2007. “He felt this was his duty. This is a very patriotic county,” the pastor said.

Michaela Brummund said the economy also was a factor in her husband’s enlistment. “It was a paycheck,” she said. He had earlier attended College of the Redwoods in Eureka and hoped eventually to open his own portable sanitation business, she said.

Tim Muetterties, who owns a realty firm in Arnold, said Brummund’s memorial service was webcast for his unit in Afghanistan. He said it was not surprising that the community rallied to support Brummund’s widow and grieving relatives.

“When communities are so small, sooner or later everybody knows everybody,” he said. The turnout for the two roadside vigils was so great that passing tourists pulled to the side of the highway to pay their respects, Muetterties said.

Brummund’s mother, Debbie Morris of Arnold, said residents of the area had shown their support for her son earlier too, after she learned from him that his Marine unit was sleeping on the ground in Afghanistan and she sent him an air mattress.

“He later told me that others in the unit were using it when he wasn’t, [so] we got a campaign going to send 44 air mattresses over — one for everybody. They were $21 each,” she said.

In the days after the memorial service, Calaveras County residents have continued to show their support.

When Michaela Brummund tried to cancel her husband’s cellphone service after his death and was slapped with a $350 early termination fee, outsiders offered to pay that charge for her. The wireless carrier later relented and waived the fee.

And an outdoor advertising company has placed a large portrait of Brummund on a local billboard and pledged that the image of the young Marine can stay there indefinitely at no charge.

In addition to his wife and mother, Brummund is survived by his father, Gregg Brummund of Avery; and a brother, Cole, 19, of Arnold. Other survivors include his stepfather Kris Morris of Arnold; stepsisters Joslyn and Skyler Morris of Sacramento; in-laws Joseph Otten of San Leandro and Leslie and Kevin Gause of Copperopolis; and brothers-in-law Morgan Gause, 12, and Gabriel Gause, 14, both of Copperopolis.

bob.pool@latimes.com