OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Following after his sister, who is the mother to 14-year-old victim, Reat Underwood, Will Corporon complimented her strength then spoke and answered questions about his nephew and father, who were killed in Sunday’s violent Jewish Community Center shootings, at a news conference on Monday.
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“It’s my father and my nephew that were killed and everyone wants to know how we’re doing and to varying degrees, we’re muddling through. No one thinks they’re going to have funerals to plan. No one believes this will happen to you, to your family,” said Corporon as he stood at a podium inside the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan.
He spoke about his father, Dr. William Lewis Corporon, 69, and how he believes he would’ve spared his life to save his nephew’s, which he said makes it even harder for him and his family.
“My father leaves behind a legacy of faith and family and community. I was just a baby when he was in college and he and mom worked to put him through medical school,” continued Corporon. “He was in family practice. I’ve heard from people today who said, ‘my children, his hands were the first hands on the planet to touch my children, and I am so grateful for that,’ and it touches my heart to hear things like that. He touched so many.”
Corporon explained how his father left behind a wonderful legacy which was all about family.
“We do have a strong family, and, boy, it’s being tested. We don’t know why bad things happen to good people. Nobody does. We choose not to focus on the why or what happened; it really doesn’t matter to us. The fact remains that two of the people we loved most in our life are now not here with us,” Corporon said of his family. “We do take comfort that they were together, and we take comfort that they didn’t suffer and we’re very grateful to my parents, my sister and brothers, and church family here, and the community of friends that they have here and our friends all over the United States that we’re hearing from.”
Corporon then offered to answer questions from members of the media about his father, nephew and family. When asked about the incident, he said he believed his two family members just pulled into a parking space and then were immediately ambushed by the shooter. He said no matter what the reason was behind their deaths, ultimately the result remains the same for him and his family.
“It takes no character to do what was done. It takes no strength of character. It takes no backbone, no morals, it takes no ethics. All it takes is an idiot with a gun, so there’s no need to focus on that. It could have been an accident on an icy road. They were together all the time. My dad always had one of the grandkids with him. It could have been a drunk driver. It could have been a car accident. It could have been any number of things, so, for us, again, the tragedy is that they’re not here. The other part will be dealt with by those who are going to deal with it.
Corporon made it clear he wanted the focus to remain on the victims and not the shooter or what his reasons were for doing what he did.
“Our goal is to shine the light on my father and my nephew and hopefully on just the senseless on these kinds of things. There’s no rhyme or reason to these things. I mean that idiot, that idiot absolutely knocked a family to its knees for no reason,” he said. “My dad should be seeing patients today at his work. Reat, if they had school today, would have been in school today studying and being with his friends. There’s no reason, no reason for this and it’s just a tragedy.”
Corporon said his father and mother had moved to the area in 2003 to be closer to family.
“He died doing exactly what he wanted. If you could ask him to pick something, that probably wouldn’t be far off the mark for him to say being with his grandkids; doing something with one of his grandkids. Like I said before, he would have given anything (for it) to just be him. And we all feel that way,” he said.
Corporon again stressed how big of a tragedy this was for him and his family, but said they will do what they can to get through their tragic losses.
“I just can’t stress enough, you know, we as a family have been dealt a huge, huge blow, but we’ll go on and we’ll get through this. We’ll always have a huge hole, two huge whole that will never be filled,” he said. “Every day is just going to be a reminder, but we do hope that if there is any way possible that any little sliver of good, goodness, grace can come of this, that by then, by the sheer grace of God that it will not have been totally, totally for nothing.”
