Praying for a Miracle at the President's Ranch

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No, I think what he saw was in some sense-he had taken an oath. And for Sherwood, the taking of an oath was extraordinarily serious. And we talked to him about it, and he said, "I took an oath before God" [in joining the National Guard].

Exactly. He knew how we felt. We never argued; we didn't talk politics with him. We couldn't burden him. He told us he had to keep a clear mind and do the job that he had to do and come home safely. And he wasn't anxious to go, but he was a big man [here, her voice breaks], and he had a job he was going to do, and he was going to try to do it as best as he could. And we promised him that we would look after his family. And we would stand with him.

He's now 10.

Right after Sherwood was deployed, which was January '04, I learned of the organization called Military Families Speak Out, which is an organization of 2,500 families with loved ones in Iraq or who have served in Iraq. I contacted them, and they are amazing people. Nancy Lessing and Charlie Richardson are parents of a young military man who has since come and gone [on his tour of duty in Iraq] and come home alive. But they with others started this organization, and they are really the best organizing people I've ever known. And this organization has grown and grown, and it turned out that others who have lost people in Iraq have become attached to Military Families Speak Out.

And we met these others: Lyla Lipscomb, Cindy Sheehan, Bill Mitchell, Sue Neiderer, Jane Bright. And through a lot of activities we were doing in the fall, we were seeing each other at various demonstrations and speeches, and before Christmas, Cindy said she thought it would be a good idea to have an organization of Gold Star Families, and we came up with the name Gold Star Families for Peace.

Eveything is done on the move. We started e-mailing each other, we set up a web site, and Cindy' sister took over the website. And there was no formality to it; it was a collection of people who were united in grief and commitment. And other people who had lost their kids joined up with us, and we made it open, so that people who had lost children in other wars could be part of it too. So we have a couple of Vietnam folks, and one World War II.

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