WHEATLAND - Mary Shepherd can't talk about these things without a tissue in hand.

She has shed many tears of frustration and fear in the past year and a half. Now, the tears are of relief and thanks.

"With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we made it," Shepherd said, drawing a deep breath to steady her ragged emotions. "We're here to tell this story."

May 2005 spawned happy times for Shepherd and her family. Two grandsons, Landon Tyson and Brice McIntosh, were at their prime as they donned Wheatland High School's blue and gold caps and gowns.

Already, though, dark clouds were building. While Brice planned to work through the summer to help fund his first semester of college, Landon would leave home for the U.S. Army.

"That was just so hard," Shepherd said. "Quite honestly, I begged him not to do that. But he just had this calling."

In little more than a year, both young men would be fighting for their lives - one from a hospital bed, and one from a war zone. But through it all - the chaos, desperation and fear - a small community would stand by Shepherd's family, providing a sanctuary of love and support that would help bring them through.

'Grimmest diagnosis'

Growing up in Casper the youngest of three boys, Brice McIntosh was social and spirited. A talented athlete, he made fast friends across the state during a high school basketball career. The gangly teenager also counted among his friends dozens of teens who, like him, showed animals in 4-H.

Hoping to study agriculture and make a spot for himself at the family's farm two miles east of Wheatland, Brice started college at Black Hills State University. Finding the school wasn't the match he'd hoped for, he transferred to Casper College at the semester break.

An unrelenting cold racked Brice that February. To family, it seemed he never quite recovered. Working a landscaping job that first summer home, the young man lost more and more weight. Back trouble plagued him, sometimes so debilitating he'd be confined to bed. Chiropractors brought only temporary relief.

Eventually a specialist overrode previous diagnoses of back troubles.

"The specialist said no, Brice, there's something else," Shepherd recalled. "They're reluctant to tell you, of course."

Brice had blastic lymphoma, or bone marrow cancer. The diagnosis came the same week of his 20th birthday, Aug. 5.

"It was just the grimmest diagnosis," Shepherd said, her gentle voice breaking. Cancer is a powerful word, striking fear and hopelessness in her heart after she lost her husband to the disease 10 years ago.

"For our family to have this again… My children had witnessed their father die a little each day for the last 10 months of his life. To think now that Brice, a healthy boy, was getting this diagnosis - it was more than the mind can process. We had experienced what it does. We witnessed it, we lived it, every day for 10 months."

Shepherd said felt like doctors were giving Brice a death sentence.

"To have this kind of diagnosis was more than we could take," Shepherd said, the words coming with difficulty. "And Landon left a couple days later for Iraq. I'm a strong person, but believe me, I went through agony over this helplessness. I didn't even know where to start to console my children, let alone my grandsons."

'You never stop praying'

When he was a baby, Landon's hair was platinum blonde, catching and returning light at every turn.

"It was just sparkly - and that was how his personality was," Shepherd said.

Like his cousin Brice, Landon was far from quiet. Noted in school as a class joker, he was social and fun-loving. "They were just kids," Shepherd said. "They were teenage kids."

Six months in basic training for the U.S. Army changed that. Shepherd and Landon's mother, Debbie Shepherd, sent a boy off to the military - a skinny, scrawny boy. They got a man back in return - a confident, strong, sturdy man.

Shepherd had a treasured chance to kiss her grandson farewell before he left for duty in Iraq. That was near the July 4, 2006, over glasses of iced tea on her back patio.

Since the day he left, she has flown an American flag in front of her house. The whipping wind has tattered and ripped the symbol, but in a way, that's a parallel to what she knows her grandson lived every day of the 15-month deployment.

As the months ticked by with a grandson at war, Shepherd kept CNN on the television. When she caught mention of the 10th Mountain Division, Shepherd would drive to the local radio station where news wires shot out instant updates.

Two months into the deployment, the Humvee Landon drove was blasted apart by an improvised explosive device. The explosion sent soldiers catapulted through the air and annihilated the vehicle.

But the soldiers were safe. And Landon's grandmother kept praying.

'Being reborn'

The Shepherds' experience was that cancer killed, and painfully. But providence provided hope.

Three days passed after Brice's diagnosis, and the family was immobile. It was simply too much to accept. Then Brice's father, Alan, called a friend in Casper to relay the news. That friend connected the McIntoshes to his brother, a renowned cancer doctor in Salt Lake City.

"That opened the door for Brice and his family to have some kind of hope," Shepherd said. Once that first glimmer of hope broke through their haze, more followed.

The specialist urged Alan to take Brice to Denver, where state-of-the-art facilities and top professionals would do all they could.

Brice started extreme chemotherapy, which would last for six months as he remained in the hospital. Shepherd's eyes still well up when she describes her decimated grandson linked to 11 bags of drugs, piggybacked on tall poles. How could there be room in his wracked body for all that?

At Christmas, doctors initiated discussions with the family about a bone marrow transplant. The chemo was working, they said. Luckily, Brice had two healthy brothers - siblings are typically a match.

"Well," Shepherd said with a grimace, "wouldn't you know. Neither one was a match. It was just such an emotional rollercoaster."

Doctors started Brice on radiation to prepare him for a transplant, pending a donor. A match was found in Germany, a woman who matched Brice's bone marrow profile.

An international transplant team converged on Denver as the family tracked the marrow's journey to the United States, then to Denver International Airport. They were by Brice's side as he was infused with new life.

"We witnessed him getting this transplant," Shepherd said, still incredulous as if she'd witnessed an act of God. "There he was, being reborn. It's the only way I can put it."

'He was the lucky one'

Early this spring, as Brice's body fought to accept the bone marrow transplant, Shepherd's attention was riveted back to Iraq.

The 10th Mountain Division had come under heavy attack by Iraqi insurgents, according to the news reports that filled stations for days. Shepherd and her family held a collective breath. Four men of the brigade had been kidnapped, and some were feared dead.

Several days passed before the family received word that Landon was safe.

"Landon, bless his heart, was the lucky one," Shepherd said, a small smile escaping. "He felt like he had guardian angels watching over them."

She knows Landon won't talk about those terrifying times - at least not yet, and not with his family. Perhaps he wants to spare them fresh fear. Now Shepherd prays that Landon will reconcile those experiences within himself.

'A caring community'

In times of troubled hearts, an extended, loving family and an amazing community gave Shepherd the strength she sought.

"We all rallied around," the grandmother said. "We were good at that. We have a large family and lots of support."

Gifts, tangible and otherwise, came from all corners, and especially from Shepherd's hometown.

"It's a very loving, giving, caring community," Shepherd said. "People that don't live in a small town really don't know the absolute, unconditional love when someone's hurting. They are there to see you through."

She can't count how many prayer chains centered on her grandsons, how many hugs she melted into at the grocery store or the post office, how many simple cards and smiles came her way.

"They're the ones that keep you going," Shepherd said. "They're here every day. They call, they pray. When you go through these kinds of crises, you need a support system. And we've got it here in Wheatland. It's alive and well."

Calls did, in fact, come from across the state - old contacts from the boys' years wrestling or shooting hoops for the Bulldogs, or from Wyoming's 4-H family.

"People would call. It was just incredible. That only happens in the state of Wyoming, where people care so much about each other," Shepherd said.

Jason's Friends, a Casper-based foundation, funded a Denver apartment for Brice's parents and sent gift cards for meals.

Brice's young cousin Tori Shepherd designed T-shirts to sell at the Wyoming State Fair. The green shirts sported a cancer cell and a cowboy boot, and read, "Kicking cancer's butt one cell at a time," with letters proclaiming the wearer was on "Brice's Team." So many green tees appeared at the fair, Shepherd couldn't bring herself to stay.

'With all my heart'

Brice came home in July. He's living next door to his grandmother, with plans to return to college.

"They keep saying he's doing so well," Shepherd said. "And I believe that, with all my heart."

Landon made it home for a brief period of R&R in April. The soldier paid a visit to a kindergarten class that had "adopted" him and sent so many thoughtful letters. He penned a letter to the local newspaper expressing appreciation of the community's support.

"Not everybody is in favor of this war," Shepherd acknowledged. "He has to know we support, and the community supports him, 100 percent. And he thanked the community for that."

Now Landon is at Fort Drum, N.Y. He'll spend Thanksgiving in Georgia, but Shepherd expects him home for Christmas. She knows the turmoil isn't over, referencing letters he has written articulating his fear, now tacked to the refrigerator amid news clippings and dozens of photographs of all her grandchildren.

But he'll be home. Alive, and well. And so will Brice.

"I'm so grateful those two boys have been granted a life now. They would not have had this chance 10 years ago," their grandmother said. "I'm so thankful… Our whole family is so thankful."