A hero came home Sunday night.

Staff Sgt. James Cawley's casket was draped with an American flag and carried by an honor guard of four Marines and four Salt Lake police officers, representing the organizations he had served. Closely following the casket as they crossed the rotunda of the Salt Lake Airport's International Terminal were Cawley's widow, Miyuki, and their children, Cecil, 8, and Keiko, 6.

About 60 family members and friends, plus more than a dozen police officers with black tape across their badges, followed. They walked through the terminal, outside and to a hearse waiting at the curb. The honor guard saluted as the casket was lifted in, while relatives and friends stood at the terminal doors, some gripping flags, some crying openly.

Family members walked to vans behind the hearse. Then, with police car flashers blinking, the small cortege drove into the night, heading for a mortuary in Roy.

Cawley, 41, was a reservist with Company F, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Regiment Marines. On March 29 he was killed during a firefight near Nasiriyah, Iraq, when a coalition forces' Humvee struck him. In civilian life he was a Salt Lake police officer who served on the gang unit and the SWAT team.

Another Utah soldier was killed Thursday in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Nino D. Livaudais, 23, and two other U.S. Army Rangers died when a car exploded at a checkpoint near the Haditha Dam, 80 miles east of the Syrian border.

As Marines and police officers waited for the arrival of the plane carrying Cawley's body from overseas, his sister, Julie Cawley Hanson, expressed the family's gratitude for the sympathy and grief that greeted news of his death.

He was "our soldier and our hero," Hanson said. "We're touched by the outpouring from our community and from our church, especially today from our prophet that we love so much, President Gordon B. Hinckley.

"We're grateful that he would mention him."

She was referring to the talk Sunday by President Hinckley during the 173rd annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

President Hinckley began his speech by talking about Cawley.

He noted that 20 years ago, Cawley "was a missionary of the church in Japan." He had grown up in the church, passed the sacrament as a deacon, and was worthy to serve a mission "to teach the gospel of peace to the people of Japan."

Cawley returned home, served in the Marines, married, became a policeman and then was recalled to active military duty, he said.

"His life, his mission, his military service, his death, seem to represent the contradictions of the peace of the gospel and the tides of war," President Hinckley said.

Hanson said the family was able to attend the talk in the Conference Center, "and it was just a wonderful, wonderful thing to know that our brother's name will be written in the annals of history."

She said the family wants the world to know "what a wonderful, wonderful man" Cawley was, "how much he loved his family."

She said she hopes the children will be taken care of. Unfortunately, she said, "the military death benefits are woefully inadequate." A trust fund for the children has been set up, and friends and family are asking that contributions be made to it.

The funeral is scheduled for noon Thursday at the LDS Bountiful Regional Center.

Miyuki Cawley said she was gratified that "he's finally come home." She began to weep, hand covering her eyes. The small children stood beside her in somber clothing, holding flags.

Detective Mark Schuman, Cawley's partner on the police force for 18 months, was among the officers escorting the casket.

"Jim was a good friend," he said before the plane arrived. "He was an honorable man," respected both by the police and the Marines in his unit.