Gold Star Families All, Regardless of Where a Soldier Fell My son, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Gary Marc Farwell, flew Black Hawk helicopters through four combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Then on February 3, 2010, he and two other soldiers died when their helicopter crashed near Mannheim, Germany. After an extensive investigation, the Army could not determine the cause of the crash. Our family is no stranger to the risks associated with military service. Two great-grandfathers, one Confederate, one Union, fought each other in Missouri and Arkansas during the Civil War. Both my father and my wife's father served with the 15th Air Force during World War II. I was an enlisted submarine sailor for four years during the Vietnam War and am now a retired Air Force officer. My youngest son, Matthew, dropped out of college and fought in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division. He also escorted Marc's coffin back to Idaho for burial and has struggled to make sense of it all. The past two years have been hell on me and my family. Last year, I visited Idaho, my home state, for a month to take care of some business with the family ranch. While at the Cassia County assessor's office, I noticed that the state had a specialty license plate to honor Gold Star families. I hesitated after seeing the license plate, not knowing how my wife would respond if I got one, but then decided to buy it anyway and personalize it with the call sign of my son's last flight, "Duke27." During World War I, military families started a tradition of hanging a small banner in the windows of their homes. The banner had a white background, a red border and one blue star for each family member in the military. If a family member died in service, a gold star replaced the blue. That gold star has become a simple, cherished symbol of a dead loved one, a parent's way to hold tight a dead child's memory. We were all given gold star lapel pins at Marc's funeral in Idaho. And we wore them for the second burial of commingled group remains at Arlington National Cemetery a year later. Then my education began. The clerk had never issued a Gold Star plate; a quick phone call to the Idaho Transportation Department in Boise revealed that the plate could not be personalized. The administrator in the Idaho Division of Veterans Services had deemed personalization inappropriate. No big deal. I submitted an application for a state-numbered Gold Star family tag. Two days later, a letter arrived, rejecting my application because my son hadn't died in combat. Confused, I called the number on the letter and asked a very nice woman why Idaho honored only that portion of Gold Star families. She was sympathetic, telling me it hurt her stomach to write those rejection letters. How often do you write one? "Two the day I wrote yours," she said. Is that typical? How many have you issued? "Thirty-nine," came her whispered reply. In the Air Force I served as a public health officer, so I knew that for every combat death there are many other line-of-duty deaths, and that many occur outside combat zones: suicides, accidents, murders and the like. Consider Donna Solomon from Tendoy, Idaho. Her son Christopher Bailey was a hospital corpsman at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center's psychiatric unit in Virginia. Several years ago, he helped care for my younger son, Matt, while he was at Portsmouth receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Then in 2009, Christopher was shot during a robbery attempt near his duty station. He was off-duty, helping a poor family. Navy personnel who escorted his body back to Idaho presented Ms. Solomon with a gold star pin and explained to her what it meant. It was a very small token of respect from a grateful nation, given to a mother whose son had died while on active duty in service to his country. Ms. Solomon at the moment of her son's death was forever a Gold Star mother. Few people have any real idea of the terrific sacrifice she made on behalf or her country. Ms. Solomon's son, like my son, did not die in combat. But are their deaths somehow less important or less honorable than those of the sons and daughters who have died in a combat zone from illness, accident or engagement with the enemy? Those who died while engaged with the enemy are awarded the Purple Heart to acknowledge their combat wounds and are usually given the Bronze Star Medal to symbolize valor on the battlefield. However they died, all these precious souls left behind a Gold Star mother and what has come to be known as a Gold Star family. In 1928, the American Gold Star Mothers were given a charter by Congress, and at the end of World War II the Gold Star Wives of America were also given a Congressional charter. The definition has remained constant to this day. The current president of the American Gold Star Mothers is Norma Luther, whose son died piloting a helicopter in the Bavarian mountains in Germany on a routine, obviously noncombat, mission. She says of the 32 mothers who signed the original charter, "5 were mothers of sons lost from influenza, pneumonia, aircraft accident in Texas and accidental gasoline torch explosion in Italy." In a 1967 directive, the Defense Department reissued the set of standards that formalized the display of the Blue and Gold Star Service Flag, and in it the Gold Star family continued to be defined as a family who had lost a loved one in the service of the country in a time of war. In 1949, the Defense Department started awarding all Gold Star families what is now the first version of the Gold Star pin for all wartime deaths retroactive to World War I. But then, in 1973, the department started awarding two versions of Gold Star pins to recently bereaved military families: one for certain conflicts, and another version for nonconflicts or differently defined conflicts. The department did this even though the Gold Star mothers, the Gold Star wives and the Defense Department's own directive make no such distinctions. I don't know, but I know it certainly confuses the issue and could make people think that the sacrifice of one family is more honorable than another. For most of us Gold Star families (but I'm sure not all), the idea of having two different Gold Stars seems to miss the point. The honor given to a family for the death of a loved one should not vary depending on details of where and when it happened - at least in the eyes and heart of this Gold Star father. About 34 states seem to agree, as they issue universal versions of a Gold Star family license plate to all Gold Star families. But Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Oregon, Ohio, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Maine, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi and Oklahoma have decided that only those families whose loved ones died in combat or a combat zone should receive their states" Gold Star status. That means that even Norma Luther, the current president of the American Gold Star Mothers, would not qualify, if she lived in one of those states. As I was writing this, the Idaho Legislature voted against changing the Gold Star law. The legislators seemed swayed in part by a letter from Brig. Gen. Alan Gayhart, assistant to the commanding general of the Idaho National Guard, who wrote, in part, "We must be alert to protect the sanctity of the Gold Star purpose, to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in combat to defend our freedom." It's worth noting that the general got the definition wrong and forgot about the families. The general might have sought better advice. Perhaps from someone like Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, who may have once reflected on the possibility of becoming a Gold Star father himself after his son was badly injured in Iraq in 2004. He told me in reply to a recent letter I sent to him, "52 other survivors expressed to me the same concerns you so eloquently stated in your letter.... I commend you for standing up and supporting changes.... Your courage, passion and steadfast determination are an example for all. General Gayhart might have also considered Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, who lost two sons, both soldiers - one to a roadside bomb in Iraq and one by suicide. Both sons "are heroes," says General Graham, and by my reading of the law, his family should twice be a Gold Star family. But it is not clear that under the laws of Idaho he would be. Perhaps someone else can explain how my son's death would hurt less, or be more worthy of respect, if he'd been killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. I certainly can't. Gary E. Farwell is a veterinarian who divides his time between Idaho, Arkansas and Virginia. He spent four years in the Navy during the Vietnam War and then attended veterinary school at the University of California-Davis. After graduating, he served for 18 years in the Air Force, including as chief of medicine at the Defense Department's Military Dog Training School at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and as chief of public health for Bitburg Air Base in Germany. He is married and the father of four children.