“You know,” a friend remarked to me Thursday morning, “Wheeling’s a pretty good place.” I’m confident that had we been in an airplane looking down on the Ohio Valley, he’d have said the same thing about our entire area. But we were on Main Street in Wheeling, and all he could see was the hundreds of people within a couple of blocks who had lined the sidewalks for a solemn occasion. Army Spc. Julian Berisford, of Benwood, was coming home. He died a hero in Afghanistan and, on Thursday morning, the hearse carrying his casket from the Wheeling-Ohio County Airport was escorted down W.Va. 2 to Marshall County. What struck my friend was, as he explained, the large number of people who turned out, some of them on very short notice, to honor Berisford. Though it was a chilly morning, many of them stood along Main Street for more than half an hour, because no one knew with certainty when the procession would pass by. When the hearse carrying Berisford’s casket passed by, you could have heard a pin drop. It was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had in some time, in large measure because of the enormous number of people who felt it was important for them to honor a neighbor who fell in our service. It was like that all along the route the procession took, I’m told. Thousands of people were involved. Police and sheriff’s department cars from throughout the area, along with firefighters, the Army and the Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle unit, provided the honor guard.