Gold Star father’s pain a haunting reminder of soldiers’ sacrifices

We were consumed, understandably so, with a double-digit unemployment rate, neighborhoods destroyed by foreclosures and families crushed by debt. The state’s treasury that year often had only enough cash to cover a couple days’ operating expenses.

Yet there was that howl of tears. To hear it shattered the ability to look away, to deny, to forget that on the other side of the world there were Americans, wearing a U.S. flag on their shoulders, who were losing much more than their next paycheck.

Memories of a grieving dad have never left me

In 2025, we’re fortunate that we don’t have a room full of Gold Star families with whom to mourn a service member who lost their lives in the line of duty. That gives us the chance to pay personal attention to the loss of soldiers like Parkview High School graduate Ryan O’Hara who died as a crew member of the Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided earlier this year with a commercial plane over the Potomac River.

In 2011, however, the Gold Star families filled rows of seats. If you saw individual photos of the attendees, you’d rank the man sobbing loudly as the most unlikely to do so.

He towered over everyone else. Memories fade over time but he was at least 6 feet 5 inches, probably more. His gray hair and beard were long and wiry, and his well-worn jeans matched well the black leather vest and boots typical of a motorcycle man. A silver chain was looped at his belt.

His son had died in Iraq in the past year, and it was clear to me as a bystander that some part of that dad had died too. He eventually left as the service went on, shielding himself behind the North Wing steps, no longer seen but still heard.

Honor the fallen soldiers who served this nation

As I returned to my office, I came across him. There, this giant, this man who in another context might look scary, was stooped over, his head on the shoulder of a high-ranking state trooper. The trooper patted the grieving Gold Star Father – a title none of us ever want – on the back.

Credit: Courtesy photo

Credit: Courtesy photo

I’ve thought about that dad every Memorial Day for 14 years. I was born on the literal last day of the Vietnam War – the day helicopters lifted out the last Americans from the embassy as the Communist forces overtook Saigon. The two American soldiers who died the day before were the last casualties of that conflict. My generation and those that have come after have rarely had the agonies of war affect us directly. Few of us have had high school buddies flown home in flag-draped coffins.

Honestly, I’m incredibly grateful for that fact. The fewer Gold Star families the better – and the more resources our society can devote to them. But that blessing makes it too easy for us without emotional scars to forget the out-of-sight-out-of-mind sacrifices of those who served in our place.

I’ll never meet the soldier son who died in Iraq sometime between the Memorial Days of 2010 and 2011. I’ll probably never again come across the motorcycle-driving, grieving Gold Star dad. But I’ll think of them – and the hundreds of thousands of other great Americans who died or lost a loved one – every Memorial Day.