Editor’s Note: Tragedy can hit home when we least expect it and Trenton residents Mike and Sherry Knapp experienced just that as they lost three children in a one-vehicle accident last month. This is the second of a two-part series featuring the Knapp family and how they have coped with that loss.
by Ronda Lickteig
R-T News Writer
It’s one of the most frustrating things modern parents deal with: a child who won’t answer their phone or return a text. Their minds often go to a worst-case scenario. But that wasn’t what immediately went through Sherry Knapp’s mind on June 6 when she sent a text to her 31-year-old daughter, Micah, and didn’t get an answer. Micah, her two brothers, 19-year-old Matheson and 18-year-old Malachi, had climbed into a 1994 Isuzu Rodeo driven by their close friend, 20-year-old Trey Shaw, headed to Jamesport for a short outing before Matheson had to be at work at ConAgra for a 5 p.m. shift.
The day had started with Sherry’s husband, Mike, waking up late for his shift at ConAgra but seeing his son Matheson as the younger man was finishing up his overnight shift. The two talked briefly and then said their goodbyes.
“He said ‘I love you’ and I said ‘I love you, too’,” Mike recalled.
Mike also saw Trey, who was also employed at ConAgra, at the plant. Trey said he and the Knapp boys were going to work on a four-wheeler that day.
“I told him you can’t work all night and play all day,” Mike said.
When Matheson returned home to get some sleep, he told his mother that Trey, who often slept at the Knapp house, would be getting off work later and would be coming to their home, so she should leave the door unlocked. The door did get locked and when Trey arrived around 7 a.m., he had to wait a minute until Sherry let him. Sherry said Trey went on to bed, but by 10:30 a.m. everyone was up and she fixed breakfast for Matheson, Malachi, Trey and Micah, with the group watching a movie and planning the trip to Jamesport. Micah asked her mother if she’d like to tag along.
“I decided to stay home and get some things done. It was kind of hard to clean the house when they were there trying to sleep, so I thought with all of them up and out it would be a good time to get something done,” said Sherry.
Around 3 p.m. Mike came home. He worked on a truck for awhile and the two ran to Trenton from their rural home around 4:30 or 4:45. Sherry says she remembers sitting at the intersection of Ninth Street and Harris Avenue and talking about how Matheson had to be at work at 5 p.m. and they still couldn’t get any of the four to answer their phones – even when Mike called.
“They might not answer Mom’s call, but they’d answer Dad’s call,” Mike said.
Their concern grew deeper.
“I just thought ‘something’s not right’,” Sherry remembered.
The couple contacted both the Grundy County Sheriff’s Office and the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office to see if any accidents had occurred between Trenton and Jamesport. No accidents had been reported.
At that point the search began for Trey’s sport utility vehicle. The Knapps and friends began traveling every road – gravel or paved – that the foursome might have traveled, including Missouri Highway 190, which connects Jamesport to Highway 146 west of Trenton. They knew the young adults had been seen at a coffee shop in Jamesport around 1 p.m., but no one had seen them since. A plea went out on Facebook for anyone who knew their whereabouts to tell them to contact their families.
As Mike and Sherry were making another trek down Highway 190, something caught Sherry’s eye.
“I saw a flicker of light, just a flash. I don’t know if it was an angel or what it was. We had already been by there, but didn’t see it. I said, ‘Mike, there’s something back there in the ditch’,” Sherry said.
The two bailed out of the vehicle and saw the wreckage. Micah had been thrown from the SUV.
“I just started screaming and told her (Sherry) to call 911, but I could tell Micah was gone,” Mike said.
Sherry made the call, which went to the Daviess County dispatch since it was just over the county line.
“I don’t even know how I knew it was the county line, but I could see a sign and somehow I knew that was the line. I was able to tell them we were just past the Grundy County line on 190. I was hysterical and they told me to calm down so they could understand me and get help.”
As Mike moved down into the water-filled ditch, his worst fears were realized – all four occupants had died in the mishap. Micah looked like she was sitting propped against the bank. He found the boys basically on top of each other.
“They took care of each other,” he said.
Mike could have waited for help to carry them from the wreckage, but he didn’t. He felt a responsibility to them.
“I wanted to get them out of the car. They were mine,” he said. “Those were my kids.”
According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol accident report, the mishap occurred when the SUV traveled partially off the right side of the road. Trey over-corrected, with the SUV returning to the roadway before it skidded and began to travel off the north side of the road. It travelled parallel to the roadway, down an embankment and became airborne, striking a ditch. Although the report notes that none of the occupants was wearing a seat belt, Mike disputes that, saying there was evidence that they were. It’s painful knowing they had only been on the road for a short time and had almost made it home.
“They were seven miles from our house,” Mike said. “It was 10 minutes from the time they left (Jamesport) until they went to eternity.”
While the chaos was occurring at home, Mike and Sherry’s daughter, Maerissa, was blissfully unaware of it at her home in Karen, Kenya, where she teaches at a Christian school. She and her roommates, Emily and Taryn, had been talking about Matheson traveling to Kenya for a visit and how he would be staying in the apartment even though they might have to explain a “man” staying there. Luckily, she went to bed before any of the Facebook posts went up seeking information on the whereabouts of her siblings and Trey.
At 5:30 a.m. on June 7 – the last day of the term at Maerissa’s school – she got a call. The caller ID said it was her father calling, but when she answered it, the voice was her uncle, Marc Knapp.
“My first thought was, ‘it’s my parents, something is wrong with my parents’,” she said. “He said ‘Are you with somebody?’ I got up and walked across the hall to my roommate’s room. I tried to wake her up, she’s a really sound sleeper….I got on the floor by her bed. All I heard at first was ‘Malachi’, then I realized they were all gone. I kept asking him to say the names again. I said ‘I didn’t hear the names, say the names again’. When they said ‘Micah’, I hadn’t even thought it would be my sister. I remember saying, ‘not Matty, too’.”
Maerissa talked to her mom, who was still at the accident scene, and Sherry told her they were trying to get in touch with the Red Cross to get her home. Soon, Maerissa’s curriculum director, Jessica, started taking over and helping to make arrangements. With her two roommates, she made it home in 24 hours, rather than the usual 30 that it takes to travel from Kenya to Kansas City.
“We all got on the same flight and every plane had three seats all together. Our longest layover was 2 1/2 hours. That never happens. They (her roommates) were with me all the way. I call them my angels. It was just God carrying me home,” she said.
Those roommates and their families helped get Maerissa through the ensuing days as she and her parents made arrangements to lay her siblings – and best friends – to rest in the cemetery at Union (Coon Creek) Baptist Church, where all four victims attended services. As they were in life, the Knapps thought the four should remain together. Mike recalled how he approached the subject with Trey’s family.
“I talked with Trey’s mom and said ‘I’d be truly honored if you’d let him be buried by my kids. They were together in life and I’d like them to be together in death’.”
Trey’s family agreed and the two families held a joint visitation at the First Baptist Church and a joint funeral at Coon Creek, where all four are buried in the church cemetery. Getting through those days was hard, but they did not feel alone as they knew God – and the entire community – was with them.
“He gave us strength when we needed it,” Mike said. “We were able to hold it together (during the visitation).
“We were able to greet everyone who came through,” Sherry recalled.
Anyone who’s ever lost someone close knows that it’s after the funeral when the real grieving begins. The Knapps, who have a faith as strong as anyone you’ll meet, continue to struggle. Imagine the energy surrounding a house full of active boys. Now imagine them gone in an instant. There’s the day Mike was driving the church van and was doing okay until he hit Highway 190 and realized Trey and Malachi wouldn’t be there for youth group. Or the day he went to the shed where the boys always left the tool cabinet open and tools strewn about.
“I went to the shed and those boys always left my tool cabinet open and tools everywhere,” he said. “The cabinet was open and I looked at the four-wheeler and I lost it again. It was four days before I could go back to that shed again. And I left the doors wide open.”
Imagine the mother who carried those children, then spent every single day nurturing and educating them only to lose them just as they were beginning to truly bear the fruit of that effort. And imagine being a sister who grew up with her siblings as her closest friends, now facing life as the only surviving child. She’ll someday have to tell her own children about her siblings. How can she adequately describe their relationship?  And speaking of future children, all the “could have beens” are there every day. Mike said he always thought that with four children, he’d have a houseful of grandkids someday. But now…..
So, how do the Knapps get through the days? Well, they have this hope…a hope that comes from their Christian faith. They know where their children are and that gives them a sense of peace.
“I have this hope. I’m going to see them again. I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have that,” said Mike.
“We don’t know how people who don’t have it cope,” Sherry added.
“When the kids were little we dedicated them back to God,” said Mike. “Who better a person to take care of them than God Himself. But that doesn’t make it easy. I sure didn’t want it.”
Tears flow freely when Mike talks about his children and the loss he feels to not have them with him. There seems to be no need to be “strong” in the face of such heartbreaking reality. He and Sherry, as well as Maerissa, believe God not only holds them now and will continue to do so in the future, but they believe He was actively involved in all that led up to the accident.
For instance, the siblings took a vacation together last summer to Florida, something that would not have happened if everything hadn’t worked out just right. Also, Maerissa came home from Kenya for Christmas last year, something she had told the family she wouldn’t be doing again this year. The reality was that the children were growing up and their times of all being together for holidays was likely coming to an end. In a video, her parents are told to “Get in here – it’s probably the last time you’ll have all four of us home for Christmas!” Maerissa is so thankful now for that last holiday that they all spent together. This Christmas, Mike and Sherry plan to travel to Kenya for the holiday, knowing they don’t want to face it at home without their children. He said one thing he’s learned is that there’s more to life than work and “things.”
“So we’re going to Africa. We’re not putting up a tree. We’re not sitting in that house at Christmas,” he said.
There has been much speculation in the community that perhaps Maerissa would remain in Trenton and not return to her teaching position in Kenya. That’s not the case, she said, noting that she is set to return this week.
“I asked her if she was sure she wants to go back, and she said ‘God hasn’t told me I’m finished there yet’,” Mike said.
The irony that the daughter who lives in Africa remains safe while their other children died seven miles from home is not lost on the couple.
“We worry about Maerissa all the time,” Mike explained. “We expect that something could happen there. But they were just seven miles from home…”
Maerissa said she doesn’t know what daily life without her siblings will be like. She said they Snapchatted, FaceTimed or communicated in some way every day.
“I saw their faces every day,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ll feel when I go back. It’s really hard to tell right now because this isn’t my routine. This isn’t my every day.” 
What she does know, and so do her parents, is that this tragedy has provided them with many opportunities to share their faith – the faith that all four of their loved ones also shared. Trey, who along with Malachi, had talked about becoming a pastor, shared in a June 3 Facebook post of the importance of not missing an opportunity to get close to Jesus:
“The only wrong time to get close to Jesus is the next time so don’t miss you (sic) opportunity.”
Sherry’s comments echo that thought. She remembers a radio sermon she heard the morning of the funeral, when she woke up at 4 a.m. The message, she said, was about a “wake-up call,” an alarm, and focused on dressing in the righteousness of Christ.
“It was about getting your relationship (to Christ) right and then you go to work. We need to be about the Father’s business,” she said.
Maerissa agrees, believing that this tragedy has given the family a way to reach others and share their faith.
“He gave us this platform as an alarm to others. You need to know Christ and if you’re a Christian, you need to be telling others,” she said. “We’re here to minister. It’s about having a personal relationship to Christ.”
The pain of this extraordinary loss is evident as each family member talks about Micah, Matheson, Malachi and Trey. They insist they aren’t angry with God and there’s no evidence to think otherwise. Their faith is strong and there are days when that’s all they feel they have. Some will ask, “But what’s the purpose? Why do they have to go through this suffering?” The Knapps don’t have an easy answer other than that God’s purposes are not always the same as ours and their faith in the one who blessed them with their children remains intact. They believe that in our death – and the deaths of their beloved – the fullness of God’s purpose is found. Maerissa points to the letter to the Philippians written by the Apostle Paul as a source of strength and hope, for both now and the future.
“In Philippians 1:21 it says ‘For to me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. There will be gain’,” she said softly. “There will be gain.”