CAMERON, Texas — On Thursday, nearly 10 hours after the shootings at Fort Hood, a Central Texas woman got a knock on the door.
It was a knock she had both feared and expected.
Jolene Cahill knew her husband was at Fort Hood, and she hadn't heard from him since the tragic events unfolded.
Mike Cahill, 62, was the only civilian killed in the massacre. He was only four years from retirement.
Jolene Cahill and her daughter Keely Vanacker talked with News 8 because they said they wanted to share their feelings about what he meant to them — and to the world.
They described the horror they faced after hearing about the shooting rampage. "We knew he was in the building, and we couldn't get in touch with him. So we knew he had to be in there," Vanacker said.
Cahill worked as a contracted physician's assistant at Fort Hood in the same soldier processing center where a gunman opened fire. From the start, his family feared the worst.
They finally learned his fate at 11:15 Thursday evening when they heard a knock at the door.
"A chaplain and a sergeant came and told me", Cahill said.
Mike Cahill loved living in rural Central Texas, his wife of 37 years said. He worked for a well-known doctor in Cameron who is described as a local icon; the man who delivered most of the town's babies over the last five decades.
Cahill then left the clinic to work at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Temple. From there, he took a job at the country's largest Army base.
Three weeks ago, he suffered a mild heart attack and went for follow-up visits to the same Cameron clinic where he once worked.
"The world is going to miss how he listened to the soldiers and took care of their needs," said his wife.
His family said their house won't be the same without him around. They said they will miss his humor and soft-spoken kindness.
"I'm going to miss my dad a lot," Vanacker said.
Jolene Cahill said there are many people in the military with mental illness, but added: "I did not expect something of this magnitude that he could've gotten in there with that semi-automatic weapon. And that makes me angry."
Cahill's daughter told us the reality of her father's sudden and violent death has not yet sunk in. But she said the overwhelming support from the community is giving her family strength during an incredibly difficult time.
