Gold Stars

Here in the MilBlog community we're well aware that families deal with the loss of a soldier in many ways. Most, while never forgetting the fallen, go on with their lives. In contrast, Cindy Sheehan (backed by a powerful PR machine) became a household name (before being dumped by her anti-war comrades.)

Gold Star mom Debbie Lee is still active on the opposite side of the argument. She recently traveled to Iraq, argued in favor of the military before the Berkeley City Council, and participated in a webathon raising over one million dollars for care packages for the troops.

Lesser known (at least to non-milblog readers) are the seperate efforts of the families of Nathan Barnes, Matt Maupin, and Mike Stokely (and no doubt others) - who've raised scholarship funds for American students, sent supplies to Iraqi schools, and carepackages to troops overseas.

Private First Class John D. Hart was killed in action in Iraq on October 18, 2003, when enemy forces ambushed his patrol using rocket propelled grenades and small arms fire. One week prior,

Hart had told his parents in a phone call last week that he was a little uneasy about a special mission he was going on, worried about a lack of protective armor on his company's Humvees. But he told them he was happy to be in Iraq, doing a job he loved and trying to make a difference in the world. He had been especially proud of achieving airborne certification in April.

The knock on Brian Hart's door came at 6 a.m. An Army colonel, a priest and a police officer had come to tell Hart and his wife that their 20-year-old son had been killed when his military vehicle was ambushed in Iraq.

Brian Hart didn't channel his grief quietly. Committed to "preventing the senseless from recurring," he railed against the military on his blog for shortcomings in supplying armor to soldiers. The one-time Republican teamed with liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy to tell Congress that the Pentagon was leaving soldiers ill-equipped.

And then Hart went beyond words to fight his cause. He became a defense contractor.

He founded a company that has developed rugged, relatively inexpensive robotic vehicles, resembling small dune buggies, to disable car bombs and roadside explosives before they detonate in hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, Hart has won over the military brass he so harshly criticizes. Three years after starting Black-I Robotics Inc., Hart and his four employees won a $728,000 contract from the Pentagon in June to further develop the "LandShark" robot.