Members of the 54th Volunteer Regiment Honor Guard, from Milford, Mass., carry the casket of Sgt. Kyle Harrington inside the funeral home.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

The family of Army Sgt. Kyle J. Harrington and a military honor guard gathered on the tarmac at the northern edge of T. F. Green Airport, in Warwick, yesterday morning to meet the young serviceman’s body on its last return home from Iraq.

Harrington, 24, was killed Jan. 24 in a noncombat accident in Basra. He was the husband of Faith Harrington and the father of a two-year-old daughter and a son who will turn six years old today.

His family says the best way to keep Harrington’s memory alive is to help the family of his best friend, Richard Gwinn, who is serving in Iraq.

On the night of Jan. 24, Richard’s wife, Michelle, got into her car to make a several-hours’ trip to console Faith Harrington, living at Fort Lewis, Wash.

She was heading south on Interstate 82 at the Washington-Oregon line at 7:38 p.m. local time, the Oregon State Police said, when her SUV hit an ice patch, slid off the highway and rolled over at least three times. Her 5-year-old son Vincent, who was in a booster seat, was thrown from the vehicle and was killed. The other occupants of the SUV, Gwinn, her mother and her two daughters, ages 2 and 6, were not hurt, the police said.

The Gwinns can’t afford the cost of their son’s funeral, said Kathleen Harrington, Kyle Harrington’s mother.

“They’re going to have to take out a loan,” she said. “He was my grandson’s best friend; their little girls always played with my granddaughter. The two couples were inseparable.”

Sandy Berube, an aunt of Kyle Harrington, said the family is about to set up the Kyle Joseph Harrington Memorial Fund to raise money to help the Gwinn family pay for their son’s burial. Contributions can be sent to the fund at P.O. Box 82, Swansea, Mass., 02777.

“We’re requesting in lieu of flowers people send donations there,” Kathleen Harrington said.

Richard Gwinn is “a soldier and he’s over there doing his job and he shouldn’t have to worry about burying his son,” Berube said.

Harrington joined the Army in May 2004 and started his first tour in Iraq, a yearlong stint, in the fall of 2005. His unit, the 542nd Maintenance Company, 80th Ordinance Battalion, 593rd Sustainment Brigade, had been redeployed to Basra for 15 months last April. Army officials have described the circumstances of his death as a “non-hostile accident.” The family said the Army told them he was killed in a forklift accident.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete as of yesterday

Harrington’s body was brought to T.F. Green Airport in a chartered plane. The honor guard that met it at the airport was there early, its seven members carefully rehearsing their motions and steps in the chilly parking lot in front of the old control tower.

The family and friends arrived in a dark green van and were driven to the end of the runway.

Seven vehicles left T. F. Green, escorting the casket to the Birchcrest Home of Waring-Sullivan, in Harrington’s hometown of Swansea. As the procession made its way east on Route 195, the line got ever longer. At the Massachusetts line, two Massachusetts State Police cars came off the median and took over the first position from a Rhode Island State Police car.

The Rhode Island trooper dropped to the back of the line, occasionally sliding partway into the leftmost lane to prevent any other traffic from passing Harrington’s procession as it made its way to Swansea. As the line of vehicles continued down the highway, police cars from surrounding towns emerged from the entrance ramps, their strobe lights blinking, and eased their way into the formation.

As they pulled into the Birchcrest parking lot, they drove through a gauntlet of three dozen members the Patriot Guard Riders, an association of motorcycle riders who attend servicemen’s funerals. Each stood silently, holding a tall flagpole with a United States flag flying from it

jhill@projo.com