Over the past several days, as clouds darkened the sky over Arlington National Cemetery, familiar scenes played out: school children on field trips, tourists on guided tours and veterans wearing jackets and caps adorned with unit patches, walking in loose formations to visit military brethren lost in combat.
There have been at least 13 service members lost in the current conflict with Iran and it is unknown how many more may join the roll of the honored dead if a fragile cease-fire and potential peace deal fail.
The unknown dead of this and future wars has manifested at the cemetery, where an expansion is underway along the southern reaches of the grounds, adjacent to Section 60.
Far from the ceremonies of Memorial Day, Section 60 is where those lost in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars rest. The thousands of people who visit know the risks being faced by today’s military families through the loss they endured decades ago from another Middle East conflict.
A Son Lost to Iraq
Long before her son’s ashes were interred in Section 60, Sarah Vaughan thought of Memorial Day as just another three-day weekend, a calendar invite to head to the beach in the Tallahassee area where she grew up.
“Memorial Day was just a holiday. I knew the meaning of it, but I didn’t pay any attention to it,” Ms. Vaughan, 72, said in an interview from her Vail, Colo. home.
“But, boy, do I now,” she said.
Looking back, she said she realized that her son John S. Vaughan seemed destined for a military career. She remembered the schoolboy who sketched American flags into the corners of the school papers and always wore camouflage clothes around his hometown. Even his childhood TV favorites were The History Channel and The Military Channel, she said.
Ms. Vaughan described her son as “straight as an arrow,” doting on his younger sister Becca and looking after his single mother whenever he could. His independent spirit led him to hunt, thread his own lures for fly fishing and to get a pilot’s license.
John Vaughan joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and after graduation entered the U.S. Army.
By June 2006, he was a 2nd lieutenant deployed to Mosul, Iraq, when a sniper ended his life on patrol at age 23, Ms. Vaughan said.
Now, Ms. Vaughan said, she will visit military cemeteries or memorials when she travels and tries to thank those in uniform for being willing to stand up for American values and freedoms.
“I think about it more than just on Memorial Day. I think about it a lot, and I’m just so proud of the bravery and the camaraderie these people have,” she said.
Ms. Vaughan said she prayed for those who remain in harm’s way and offered a piece of advice to their families.
“Stand up straight,” she said, “and be so proud of what their children are doing.”
Three Children Left Behind
More than 20 years ago, in 2005, Patty Stubenhofer spent Memorial Day searching for answers as she stood in Section 60 holding her three children in front of the grave of their father and her husband, U.S. Army Capt. Mark Stubenhofer.
Military service had been a big part of her upbringing. Her father served in the Navy; her grandfathers were in the Air Force and Navy; and her grandmother joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
Yet, she said, she did not fully realize the commitment of military life until she was married, experiencing the months apart because of training or deployments. Mrs. Stubenhofer said she also learned the pride and love of a country born of those sacrifices. Two decades later, she said, it is still hard to put that feeling into words.
Mark Stubenhofer was killed on Dec. 7, 2004, in a firefight in Baghdad, Iraq.
“I am living the military family’s worst nightmare and it doesn’t take a conflict for them to become a surviving family,” she said, referencing training accidents and other non-combat deaths. “There’s nothing I can say that can prepare anyone for this.”
“I spent my first Memorial Day as a military widow holding the hands of our three children,” she said, “searching for the right words to explain the significance of this day.”
Ensuing Memorial Day weekends were not spent at graveside ceremonies, but with other surviving military families at the TAPS Good Grief Camp, she said.
During those weekends, her son and two daughters were paired with a mentor and placed in groups with other children to learn how to process their grief. Now, her children are in their 20s and have become mentors for the program.
“To us now, every day is Memorial Day,” she said. “It’s knowing that he loved us and his country so much that he was willing to stand on the front line and sacrifice his life to protect us and our freedom. ”
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