Military Officer - November 2008 - (Page 65)

come back.” Lt. Col. Joe Fenty Jr., USA, was killed May 5, 2006, in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. There isn’t a man or woman who has signed on for military duty who hasn’t thought about the risks inherent in the job. Servicemembers killed in action often are a story on the evening news. To the general public, it is reason to pause and reﬂect, if only momentarily. But each fallen hero is a husband or wife, son or daughter, mother or father of family members whose worlds are turned upside down. With that knock on the door, the loss changes lives forever. Notiﬁcation In November 1944, Marie Jordan Speer’s husband, Edward Jordan, a private in the Army’s 29th Infantry, was killed in action in World War II. A Western Union employee delivered the news. Now, more than 60 years later, she remembers the day clearly. “These words stuck with me: Gone are the dreams,” recalls Speer. “We had such dreams together. Immediately those dreams were gone, as they were for so many other young wives.” Hattie Hunt received a telegram at her Florida home in June 1952 bearing the dreaded news that her husband had been killed in action. The telegram from the secretary of state, which she still keeps in a scrapbook, informed her that the man she had known and loved since she was 16, Maj. William Hunt, USA, had been shot down near Naechon, Korea. His body was never recovered. Remembering the day she was notiﬁed still evokes tears for Hunt. “I immediately went into shock to receive news like that by telegram. When I came out of shock, there was no reality that he was dead. I kept waiting for the phone to ring and it would be him,” she says. “No one in the military approached me. I still can’t believe that. You go to the movies and see war stories, and the military car pulls up and the family looks out the window and sees them coming to the door. It [might] have helped if I had had that.” By the time of the Vietnam War, the process of military notiﬁcation to next of kin had become more personal. On Feb. 5, 1969, Mary Kay Olson received a visit from Air Force Maj. Donald Lynch, who told her that her husband’s plane had been shot down. Maj. Bob Olson, USAF, was missing in action. Lynch returned unannounced in October 1969, two days before Olson’s 32nd birthday, to tell her that her husband, the father of her ﬁve children, had been killed. Recalling that day, Olson chokes back tears and says, “Forty years later, it still affects me.” A day before the knock on the door at Kristen Fenty’s home, she had an inkling something had happened to her husband of 19 years. Joe Fenty and nine other soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y., died when their CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed during combat operations. Families on the base knew there had been a terrible accident. Casualty notiﬁcation teams were in place, and the family readiness group was gearing up. But they all had a painfully long wait while the soldiers were identiﬁed. “The calling tree started with partnering spouses. I was the only one in the organization not to get a call. That made it kind of obvious,” remembers Fenty. Still, when the knock came, Fenty says, “I walked down the hall with the baby, thinking maybe it was just the sound of the heat turning on. Then I could see the storm door open. I thought maybe the wind caught the door.” But when she opened the door and saw the chaplain and the casualty notiﬁcation ofﬁcer, she simply said, “Really?” Hattie Hunt has kept her telegram. and invited them in. Joe Fenty was known for his “quiet professionalism,” and through her composure, Fenty already was starting the process of honoring his memory. Support Speer remembers the months following her husband’s death as a whirlwind. “For months we had all these visits and special Masses in his memory. We constantly were talking and sharing memories of Eddie. There was patriotism wherever you went and a sense that we were all in it together. It helped ease the pain,” says Speer. More than 400,000 American troops were killed during World War II. Young war widows and their children could be found by the thousands throughout American cities. It wasn’t difﬁcult for Speer to ﬁnd other young women in her New York City neighborhood who shared her experience. She invited three of them to her home, and they decided to form a group. The Gold Star Wives of America was born. “We met and had conversations about our husbands. We had birthday parties and special events for our children. We NOVEMBER 2008 MILITARY OFFICER 65

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - November 2008

Military Officer - November 2008 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Chapters in Action Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Financial Guidebook Out of the Red 7 Year-End Tax Strategies Cover Story: Memory Survives Something to Say MOAA Scholarship Recipients Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Member Books Advertising Index MOAA Member Services MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - November 2008

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