2 years ago
Today, mourners will begin gathering at a funeral home in East Amherst for Jonathon Cote's wake. Cote's body was discovered last Saturday in Iraq, where he was kidnapped while working as a security contractor.
A closed casket viewing for Jonathon Michael Cote will be held today and Thursday at the Dengler & Roberts Funeral home on Transit Road in East Amherst from 4pm to 8pm both days.
The Memorial Service will be held on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 10am at the Nativity Blessed Virgin Mary on Harris Hill Road in Williamsville. Father Roy Herberger from Saint Columba Brigid, Buffalo New York and Pastor Randy Rozell from Holy Cross, Clarence New York will officiate the ceremony.
The family says everyone is welcome to attend.
Following the memorial service, the casket will be brought to Mount Calvary Cemetery
On Thursday, family members spoke publically about Cote's death.
Relatives say they still don't how or when their son died after he was kidnapped in Iraq.
Francis Cote says the results of an autopsy on his 25-year-old son aren't expected for six to eight weeks, but the family learned Cote has been dead for some time.
At an emotional press conference Thursday in suburban Buffalo, Francis Cote says he wants answers about who kidnapped Cote and four companions in November 2006. He says he can forgive his son's captors and faith in God has kept him going through the ordeal.
Cote's body was recovered on Saturday and identified by the FBI.
Cote and the others -- whose bodies were previously recovered -- were abducted during an ambush on a convoy they were escorting in southern Iraq.
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Jonathon Cote was a soldier but returned to Iraq to work as a private contractor. He and four other contractors were taken hostage in Iraq in November, 2006 by rebels posing as Iraqi police officers.
From the very beginning, the family was in constant contact with the state department, waiting to hear anything.
The phone rang for the Cote's last month, but it wasn't good news. Five fingers were sent to the U.S. government. DNA showed one of them was Jonathon's.
Just last weekend, the Cote family was told a body had been recovered in Iraq; we now know it was Jonathon.
"This is a time the family needs all the prayers they can get," Dennis Hunt, a friend of the family told 2 On Your Side.
Prayer helped the Cote's get through their toughest times. When we talked to Jonathon's dad last month, it was obvious that prayer would get him through this day, a day they hope would never come. "It's God's plan," said Cote. "We don't have a say in it sometimes. There's something better that will come out of this, if we have lost our son."
WGRZ-TV
