If you see women dressed in a white shirt, dress and blazer with a gold star on their lapel this Memorial Day weekend in Washington, D.C., it most likely is a Gold Star Mother.
The American Gold Star Mothers is a nearly 100-year-old organization founded in the District by Grace Darling Seibold. The members are made up of moms who have lost a son or daughter in service of the United States Armed Forces.
The members support each other and help keep the memory of the children alive by helping veterans and those currently serving in the military along with their families.
WTOP spoke to two Gold Star Mothers on the National Mall at the World War II Memorial.
“It’s actually saved my life,” said Annette Kirk. “I’m being perfectly honest, I had a very hard road the first two years.”
Kirk, who is now the national first vice president of the American Gold Star Mothers, lost her son Paul Cuzzupe II on Aug. 8, 2010. He was a private, first-class Army combat medic killed by an IED in Afghanistan.
Not only did Kirk, who had served in the Army for seven years, have a full-time job, she also had a pre-teen daughter and twin sons still at home.
“I knew that I had to carry on for them,” Kirk said.
With the support of the American Gold Star Mothers, Kirk was able to heal.
“We would meet, we’d have chapter meetings, and if you wanted to cry, you could cry. They understood, they knew why,” she said.
Nodding her head knowingly was Rose Duvall, a fellow Gold Star Mother who spent 20 years in the Air Force.
Duvall said with pride that her late son, Tech. Sgt. Scott Duffman followed in her footsteps to the Air Force, rather than the Army like his father.
“He grew up in a military family,” Duvall said of her late son. “He once said, ‘I like saving lives, and the best way to do it is in the military.’”
Duffman was a paramedic, and Duvall said he went after the downed pilots and anyone else that needed him.
When asked if she minds when people ask about her late son, she shook her head and said, “it’s been often said that a person dies twice when they leave this earth and when people stop saying their name.”
“As long as they say their name, they’re always alive in our hearts and our memories and in everything we see around us,” she said.
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