It was going to be a long, hard fight against an invisible enemy. Kristofor Stonesifer knew that early on.
“A lot of people are going to die,” the former college philosophy student and newly minted Army Ranger told his mother shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
“It struck me as prophetic,” Ruth Stonesifer recalled last week. “Of course, I didn’t think it would be him.”
Pfc. Stonesifer, 28, and his comrade, Spc. Jonn Edmunds, 20, both based at Georgia’s Fort Benning, were killed when their unit’s Black Hawk helicopter crashed Oct. 19, 2001, near the Afghanistan border. They were the first two combat-related deaths in the U.S. war on terror.
It took nearly a decade, but the most visible of that invisible enemy, Osama bin Laden, met his end a week ago at the hands of Navy SEALs. The historic moment brought a bit of solace to Ruth Stonesifer. But not a lot.
Maybe enthusiasm would have been easier to come by right after her son died, back when emotions were raw. But over the years, both the Stonesifer and Edmunds families have had to keep celebrating birthdays, observing anniversaries, moving through career changes. Life has kept flowing and, along the way, eroded the once-biting need for revenge.
“I never believed bin Laden killed my son,” Ruth Stonesifer said. “He wanted to be there. As a student of philosophy, he was comfortable about his death.”
Anne Edmunds, Jonn’s widow, was equally reserved upon learning of the terrorist’s demise.
“I can’t say it makes me happy; no one’s death makes me happy,” she said. “It was a mission that our military has been on since 1993 when our Rangers were killed in Somalia. Jonn was on a mission. It was important that mission was completed.”
The Stonesifers and Edmunds have waited for justice longer than any other military family in this war. They have spent most of that time trying to make sense of their devastating losses and hurling themselves into activities meant to carry on and expand their loved ones’ legacies.
Anne Edmunds left Georgia and returned to her and Jonn’s native Cheyenne, Wyo., after his death. She has not remarried but has had two children with her late husband through artificial insemination. She keeps photos of Jonn around the house and often tells her children about their dad, a quietly funny, generous young man.
“It’s important that they know him and that people are still going on with their lives,” she said.
Moving on with living was wrenching, she said. “The world stopped for me, but everyone else moved on.”
She got active in her church, earned a master’s degree and works for a program that provides health insurance for the children who don’t have it. She has noticed the public has grown used to the idea of war. Or numb to it.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush said the nation was engaged in the first war of the 21st century. Since then, nearly 6,000 troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It’s so sad,” said Anne Edmunds. “There are so many people who don’t know who [the dead soldiers] are. Most people go through their day and don’t even think of it.”
After learning of his son’s death, Donn Edmunds, a three-tour Vietnam veteran, told the media, “Cheyenne, Wyoming, is the new ground zero. And if this conflict continues on like it may be doing, there may be other ground zeroes.”
Reminded of that in an interview last week, he said, “We have 6,000 smaller ground zeroes around the country right now.
“We’re still burying 20-year-olds,” he said, adding that five servicemen have joined his son in the same cemetery. “The general population hasn’t borne the brunt of the war. It’s been made by the middle-class communities, by small towns.”
Donn Edmunds has established a scholarship in his son’s name. He has also thrown himself into politics, running unsuccessfully for the state legislature three times.
He said he was relieved to see bin Laden killed.
“It was an outstanding operation,” said Edmunds. “Frankly, I was worried about the quality of our armed services. Ten years ago, we had a peacetime Army. But they have impressed me.”
He believes the involvement in Afghanistan is a marathon. “I see you calling me in 10 years and asking me, ‘How do you feel about it now?’ ”
Ric Stonesifer, Kris’ father, doesn’t want to be talking about the same wars in 10 years. Afghanistan is a tribal society, he said, ungovernable as a nation. And Iraqis should be given a chance to run their own country.
“I think our mission is at an end,” said Stonesifer, a former Navy flier who works for a military contractor. “It’s time to get the boys home and stop killing them. We’re looking like Vietnam again.”
Stonesifer was pleased to see bin Laden killed. He, unlike his ex-wife, Ruth, thinks bin Laden caused his son’s death.
Stonesifer thinks of his son daily. Each day, he walks into his office and looks up at a poster of his son that had been displayed around town as part of a “Hometown Heroes” campaign. His day always starts with the same ritual.
“I go in each day and salute a hero,” he said.
When the reality of war crashed hard into Ruth’s life in October 2001, no one really knew what she was going through.
A month later, she heard about the Gold Star Mothers, an organization of women whose sons and daughters have been killed in military service. She checked out their website and “knew instinctively I wanted to be surrounded by them.”
Soon, she was having lunch with three “Vietnam mothers.”
Ruth Stonesifer, who lives near Philadelphia, attended a memorial for a fallen soldier and offered condolences. Then she did it again, each time feeling she was making a difference — and easing her own pain. In all, more than 30 servicemen have died in the communities outlying the Philadelphia area, where she lives.
“When you lose yourself in volunteerism, you have a chance to get yourself out of your hole,” she said.
By 2009, she was national president of the American Gold Star Mothers and gave a speech at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
Years earlier, the Stonesifers had signed off on burying Kris at Arlington, but changed their minds after finding their son’s wishes written down. The fallen warrior, outdoorsman and one-time vegan wanted his loved ones to hike to a serene mountain pond in Montana, scatter his ashes, then enjoy “Guinness Stout, cheap cigars and good-quality food.” They did so, calling it Operation Stealth Sprinkle.
Ruth Stonesifer said her son often challenged and inspired her, asking, “Learn something new today, mom?”
That has been her mission the past 10 years.
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