A military widow reveals what Memorial Day means after her husband’s final return home
Honoring the veterans who have passed away on this Memorial Day
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins shows the true cost of war and the sacrifices made by service members. He insists that those who did not return home should be remembered and their memory preserved.
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On Nov. 2, 2023, I lost my husband Andy in a Humvee accident during Army Reserve training in Virginia. He was the captain. He was four months shy of his twenty-eighth birthday. We had a 17-month-old daughter named Adalyn, we were in the middle of building a house, and we had just gotten the first permit on a 200-acre farm, a purchase we had wanted for years. It didn’t matter that at 2:20 pm, when I picked up the phone and heard his commander speak, I asked him to send me a message, because my ears were ringing and the walls felt like they were falling.
Three days later, I went to the Virginia Commonwealth University trauma center in Richmond with my family, to take Andy home. The Edinburgh hearse met us there. Officer Andy was waiting in uniform, with a straight back and the stoic features you would expect from a military officer. He gave me the biggest hug of my life, and when we parted, his legs were tied and he sank to his knees.
I realized that the journey home would take two and a half hours. A small procession behind a white car with green markings, my brother-in-law at the wheel, my family, Andy’s brothers and a few friends. I was expecting something decent. I was expecting the impossible.
I was wrong about everything.
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Amy King holds her daughter Adalyn in front of her husband’s flag-draped casket. (Courtesy of Angie Vann, owner of Angie Renee Photography)
The first overpass should be a hint. I glanced at my phone and saw a fire engine parked on the other side of the bridge, an American flag on the side, three uniformed firefighters holding on tight to salute as we approached. This is Andy’s, I noticed. This is ours.
A few miles down, another overpass appeared, and on it another fire engine, this one with its ladder raised and perhaps a dozen uniformed firefighters standing focused on a large American flag hanging over the railroad tracks. Greetings. The sight was amazing and emotionally wrenching at the same time. I stared at that top until it crumpled in the back window, touched by the kindness of strangers and wishing I had thought to take a picture.
As it turned out, I would have many opportunities.
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I saw the next overpass coming in the distance, what appeared to be small figures standing in front of a fire truck. As we approached, I saw another American flag, this one being raised by uniformed firefighters giving a free hand salute. They were joined by villagers who came alone. Men, women, children and even toddlers a little older than my daughter stand in worship.
We passed under more than 35 places on the way home. Firefighters maintained a stoic, reserved, and respectful presence to almost everyone. America’s heroes themselves, honoring a fallen soldier they never met. And it wasn’t just overpasses. People had pulled off the freeway onto the shoulder of the road and were waving to us as we passed. I couldn’t believe the number of strangers who were paying their respects on the way.
I found out later that our friend Josh had helped organize it. I had called him a few days earlier and asked if he could plan a little homecoming trip down Main Street in Woodstock for friends and family. I didn’t expect to come home which took the entire two and a half hour drive.
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Josh was a volunteer firefighter, and he knew the right people to visit in the various municipalities along Route 64 and Route 81. His wife, Amanda, arranged for a professional photographer and videographer to capture Andy’s final journey home forever, especially for Adalyn to watch one day when she was old enough to appreciate it.
One of the men on Andy’s wing, Mike, was also a police officer in Richmond. He led the procession from the medical examiner’s office onto I-95. From there, local and state police pick each other up at regular intervals on the highway. At one point, they blocked the entrance to the road to allow our small line of cars to merge onto the road. “This is what they do for the president,” said my brother-in-law.
Amy King is an Army widow and author of, “Say It Out Loud: A Young Widow’s Triumph Over Tragedy.” (Post Hill Press)
No one had warned me about any of them. They wanted it to be a surprise, a pleasant shock completely different from what I had been given three days before. That was especially true of one of the last features we passed under: a large American flag suspended between two cranes on Route 81, surrounded by ordinary people who wanted to show their support with a wave of the shoulder, a salute, a sign, or just a smile. I wish we could have stopped, so I could thank them all.
Closer to home, overpasses offered an opportunity for something equally inspiring. Farm equipment was parked on the outer edge of Route 81 for the last 35 miles between Harrisonburg and Woodstock. Not random farmers. Andy’s customers. Andy worked in agriculture and treated the farmers he helped like family. Now they lined the road with their tractors, pickers, backhoes, loaders, cultivators and balers, standing in front of their machines with sad stoicism with a salute or a wave.
I did not know their politics. I did not know who they voted for and from which parties. I don’t know their dreams, their failures, their tragedies or their celebrations. I immediately knew that they had appeared.
We were headed for Richmond in the morning sunshine, about a two and a half hour drive. It took us four hours to get home, because of the endless reminder.
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I wish it would stretch forever.
We passed under more than 35 places on the way home. Firefighters maintained a stoic, reserved, and respectful presence to almost everyone. America’s heroes themselves, honoring a fallen soldier they never met.
Our police escort led us slowly down Main Street in Woodstock towards the funeral home. My neighbors lined the sidewalk, on their porches, in their front yards, waving commemorative American flags on sticks. It felt like the fourth of July. Pastor Nate stood with one foot on the street and the other on the side of the road, crying as he held the Emanuel Church flag aloft, the same flag that he had welcomed to Woodstock years before.
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Andy had a dead line of work. Technically, that means I was given a folded flag at his funeral the following Friday. The army actually gave three: one for me, one for Adalyn, and the third I gave to Andy’s Uncle Wayne. Since then I have struggled, I have struggled with whether I deserve to call myself a military widow. Andy didn’t die in Afghanistan or Iraq. He died in a training accident, in the United States, on Thursday afternoon, four minutes after he sent a message to his friend that he would call him on the 15th.
But what I learned on the way back from Richmond is that this country doesn’t measure that difference the way I do. The firefighters on those overpards didn’t ask where or how Andy died, or if his death was accounted for. They went up there wearing uniforms and carrying a flag and stopped to greet someone they did not know because he was wearing a uniform and had not returned home.
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On Memorial Day, I will think of them all. Firefighters. Farmers. Neighbors holding small flags on sticks. Pastor Nate crying on Main Street. Strangers pulled their cars to the side of the highway because a hearse was passing by. None of them knew Andy. They all pointed to him.
That’s what Memorial Day is all about. Not a sale, not a long weekend, not the start of summer. It is a country that decides, on its own, without being asked, to stand on top and salute.
