Event connects Gold Star Families, kin of those who died in military service

By Rick Rojas

The Washington Post
Sunday, July 25, 2010

An indescribable pain consumes two Maryland mothers as they approach the anniversaries of their entrance into a network of families they hoped never to join: those with children killed in war.

On Aug. 5, 2006, Deborah Higgins buried her first-born son, Lance Cpl. James W. Higgins, 22, after he was killed in Iraq days shy of returning home. Two years earlier, on Aug. 5, Linda Faulstich received word that her son, Army Spec. Raymond J. Faulstich Jr., 24, died in Iraq that day after his convoy was attacked.

The deaths forever altered their lives. Faulstich, 60, of Leonardtown said she often wondered whether there would come a time when she could be happy again... Read the rest of this article at the Washington Post