Pastor plays T.N.T at young guy's funeral

Victim remembered with rock 'n' roll

AC/DC - T.N.T.


By Dwayne Tingley
Times & Transcript Staff
Published Saturday December 29th, 2007


HOPEWELL CAPE - It was a first for the staid Albert County Funeral Home -- just the way Dana Butland would have wanted it.

Butland, 23, was remembered by relatives, friends and neighbors with a recording of heavy metal music from his favorite band, AC/DC. The strains of their hit "TNT", which has all the subtlety of a logging truck's air brakes on a steep hill, echoed off the pine rafters of the funeral home yesterday afternoon.

Butland was killed with two friends in a car accident on Dec. 22 on the Mary's Point Road. He once told friends that if he died young, he would like AC/DC played at the funeral.

Funerals for the two other victims of the accident, Shawn Williamson and Kris Irving, both 25, were held Thursday at the funeral home.

Pastor Timothy Johnson of the Harvey and Riverside-Albert Baptist Churches surprised the mourners, who crammed into every nook and cranny of the funeral home, by playing the rock music ('Cause I'm TNT, I'm Dynamite).

"If you reject a person's style of music, you also reject the person," the pastor said.

As the music blared, there was a mixture of tears and nervous laughter from the young people while most others sat silently.

A friend of Butland's, 20-year-old Nick Rossiter of Midway, stood at the back of the chapel, sporting an AC/DC T-shirt. There was no doubt that Butland was smiling in heaven, Rossiter said.

"He would have loved this because he liked to have a good time," said Rossiter, who also placed an AC/DC flag in the casket before the funeral.

Pastor Johnson, 38, recalled his own encounters with heavy metal music as a teenager near Minto. After a night of wild partying on Grand Lake, Johnson and his friends listened to Metallica just a few hours before sunrise. That's when, he said, God spoke to him and he eventually turned his life around for the better.

Continued here.