Clyde Hughes, chaplain and rifleman for the Dayton National Cemetery Honor Squad, spoke at the service held Saturday at the Memorial Monument at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. He said Gold Star Family members are “the most unsung heroes in American life and history.”
“Our flag does not fly just because the wind moves it. It flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it but also flies with the pain felt among the many loved ones he left behind,” he said. “But the pain to the family renews itself every day for decades. Everything is a reminder of the loss, and although experience may make it more bearable, the pain is permanent.”
Jim and Leslie Groves are the parents of Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 James E. Groves III, a Kettering man who was killed in March 2013 in Kandahar, Afghanistan when he was 37.
Jim Groves said his son started out in military intelligence, went to air assault, became a chief warrant officer and then a pilot. He flew an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, did two tours in Iraq, two tours in Afghanistan and logged over 3,000 hours of combat before he was killed.
“Six months short of coming home and a year and a half short of retirement ... (but) he blessed us with two (grand)sons,” Jim Groves said.
“It’s to those men and women that we owe them a great debt because their sacrifice is what protects us, and that’s a natural debt we can never repay,” he added.
Gold Star wife Tonya Austin-Shelton was married to John Shelton, who was in the Air Force and died in 1994. They had two kids.
“You never think of losing your spouse, but death is a part of life. You have to move on (even though) it’s not necessarily something that you like,” she said.
Austin-Shelton said she has come to this memorial the last three or four years to honors her husband and others who lost their lives.
“I’m grateful that there is a remembrance of those who have gone on and have sacrificed so much. Sometimes we don’t think about what people sacrifice and it’s not only a sacrifice on the part of the member being gone but also a sacrifice on the family,” she said. “We sometimes just take that for granted and we should never take it for granted.”
The Gold Star Families Memorial Monument was unveiled on Oct. 16, 2018. It was donated by the Hershel “Woody” Williams Congressional Medal of Honor Education Foundation, Inc.
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