Memorial Day Year-Round

Bonnie Carroll founded the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors — TAPS — which delivers huge doses of compassion and healing after a military death.

A military death is different, and TAPS is there for the family

When Bonnie Carroll’s husband Tom—a U.S. Army general and Vietnam hero—was killed eight years ago in a Juneau, Alaska, plane crash, she learned the difference between a military and civilian death.

The military is a fraternity and after a death the family must leave it. This happens slowly, and often with compassion, but it always happens. The military primarily provides a family with death notification, burial, and death benefits. The military’s job is to fight, and prepare to fight. Survivors are offered no formal counseling.

A military death compels most families to do something bereavement specialists say is wrong: that is, to make big decisions quickly, especially if they lived on base. “Civilians, following a death, don’t have to move,” says Carroll, 42. “They don’t have to leave their support groups, their friends. The kids don’t have to leave school and change towns and change friends. When death occurs in the military, you lose everything.”

Carroll was left with three teen-agers and a lot of questions which the military couldn’t handle, despite its good intentions. After talking with other widows, she came to realize that misery doesn’t love company; it needs company. So she founded the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors — TAPS — which delivers huge doses of compassion and healing after a military death. Her nonprofit group relies on volunteers and donations and is always busy: some 2,000 armed forces members die each year, mostly in accidents. TAPS offers help to anyone affected: family, friends, loved ones, and colleagues. The military sends survivors to the TAPS group with confidence, knowing the ordeal of a military survivor differs from that of civilians, Carroll says.

TAPS operates around the clock, but it all comes into focus over the Memorial Day weekend during its annual survivor seminar, when grieving loved ones meet outside Washington, D.C., to talk with each other, and with professionals, so that healing can be advanced. Yes, they cry. They also laugh. Laughter is part of healing.

Children, at their specially designed kids’ camp, learn to be even more proud of their fallen parent. They also learn that military life carries risk, that preparing for war is not always safe, and that those who give their lives died for something valuable.

Empathy, not sympathy

In Norwalk, Ohio, lives a family now composed of four daughters and a mother. The father and husband, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Chuck Sweet, was killed in the 1995 crash of an AWACS aircraft along with 23 others. His widow, Maggie Sweet, attended the TAPS seminar in 1996. In 1997, she brought her three oldest girls to attend the kids’ camp, formally called the Youth Gathering (her youngest, Charlotte, nicknamed Charlie after her dad, was too young to go).

“I certainly could see a difference in all of them,” Sweet says. “The girls were always pretty open, but the way they connected with the other kids, I thought that was really interesting. There was an immediate comfortableness. It was special — you know? It kind of validated the loss. It wasn’t that they all sat around and cried together — that was the grown-up part. It was being at ease with something they are familiar with: the military life. It takes you back to that comfortable feeling, what you were safe in. They didn’t have to worry.”

It was nice to not go through the terribly awkward ordeal of telling people what happened to her father, says Bethany Sweet, 16. “Most people, when they hear what happened, they automatically feel sympathy,” she says. “But when you’ve been around people who have been through this, they feel empathy. That’s a good feeling when you know they’re not just feeling sorry for you.”

Her sister, Laura, 15, remembers the tears. “A lot of us cried. One of the saddest parts was that there were a lot of little kids there (who) have lost a parent at such a young age.” Stephanie, 13, found comfort from meeting children whose fathers died alongside her own. “It helps to know that other people went through the same (grief) and did OK,” she says.

The Sweet girls still cry sometimes. It was difficult for them to talk about their loss. But they wanted to help get the word out about TAPS. For them, and for many others, the healing has started. They are grateful.

Building memories

The kids’ camp, where youngsters spend four active days honoring their fallen parent, builds pride quickly and thoroughly. This year, the children will dine at the Fort Meyer mess hall. They’ll have a formal picture taken in front of the Iwo Jima monument, outside Fort Meyer, after learning from Marines about the historic battle. They’ll also deliver their own gifts, quiet offerings, to the Vietnam Memorial Wall. In past years, they’ve visited the White House, the Capitol, a Navy ship in the harbor, the Navy Memorial, the Fort Meyer Caisson horses (which pull the funeral carriages), and the Hall of Heroes in the Pentagon.

Their workshops will include building “memory books” — cutting pictures from magazines that remind them of the people they lost — thus honoring and sharpening their memory. They’ll cut out paper hearts and be asked to show, without words, how they feel. In the past, some have torn the hearts in half. Others have stomped on them. Some have carefully put them in safe places for protection. These are moments that can change a young life in transition.

One of the most moving parts of the weekend will occur at the Memorial Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. Two children from the TAPS group will be part of the parade of veterans groups entering the amphitheater before the president and chiefs of staff. The children, chosen by their peers and surrounded by aging veterans, many from World War II, are a poignant tribute to military families. Two other TAPS children will lay a handmade wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

“They make them so proud”

Allison Burris, of Lawrenceville, Ga., was nearly 4 when her father, Army Maj. Andrew Scott Burris, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, was killed in a 1997 motor vehicle accident while evaluating Maryland National Guard training maneuvers. Mostly what she remembers is her daddy at home in Fort Bragg, N.C., pointing to a globe before he left on his last trip. The TAPS camp enhanced those memories, thanks to a happy coincidence. A soldier assigned as Allison’s mentor had known her father and had served in his honor guard. The things he told her made her proud.

“The first day, I was sort of embarrassed,” says Allison, now 6. “Like when you first go to school. Then I got used to it, and then I liked it. They were friendly, and they helped me with stuff. We learned how to fold the flag. I have one in my room that my dad used to have.”

Her mother, Karen, appreciates what the TAPS kids camp has done for Allison. “They make them so proud of who their parents were,” she says, “and what they did.”

G. Patrick Pawling, a freelance writer in Ocean City, N.J., also has written for Time, Life, Woman's Day, Sports Illustrated, Maxim, The Discovery Channel Online, and others.

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