WORLD / Middle East

Iraq war widows seek strength amid loss
(AP)
Updated: 2006-05-29 19:16

Kimberly Hazelgrove believes in military protocol.

She was a military intelligence officer when her husband, a native of Edinburgh, Ind., was killed in a 2004 helicopter crash over Mosul. She knew what to expect ¡ª knew the possibilities.

She also knew exactly why officers in dress uniforms came to her door. It was a reality of a soldier's life at war, one she and her husband both recognized before he deployed to Iraq with the Army's 10th Mountain Division.

Instead of focusing on the loss, though, Hazelgrove considers what fortune she can in the circumstances around his death ¡ª she was home sick the week before her husband was killed and was able to speak to him daily on the telephone.

"I generally didn't get to do that," she said.

Hazelgrove has since left the military, and moved from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Lorton, Va., to work and raise her family.

"I don't survive. I live," Hazelgrove, 32, said. "I live every day for me and my children."

With the sternness of a military mom, she has kept their lives stable, remaining in the military for a year after her husband was killed. She surrounded the family with supportive friends to keep life from unraveling uncontrollably.

Even now, she is stern with her children, now 2 and 5.

"I teach them life is not fair, and sometimes you have to make it through the really bad times, but it only makes us stronger," Hazelgrove said.

Her 5-year-old son Brandon answers his mother quickly when she asks where is daddy is.

"My daddy is heaven with Jesus," the boy says loudly. "He died in a helicopter."
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