(2/6) “The Army was different back then. You have to remember,...

(2/6) “The Army was different back then. You have to remember, we had all those years of peace. For us it was swim meets and soccer games. Mark signed up to coach all the kids’ teams. He didn’t want to miss a moment with them. We had three children. Jeffrey was our oldest, then Kevin, then Melanie. Jeffrey was a leader like his Daddy. He wanted to build things. He erected tents in the living room. He slept in a sleeping bag. But Kevin was different. He was the tenderhearted one. He felt the pain of the world. I remember how shocked he was when he learned about slavery in school. He couldn’t even eat when he learned about the Holocaust. Jeffrey would always say: ‘Kevin! Stop thinking so much! Let’s go play soccer!’ But Kevin always felt like he had to figure out the world. He was our smart one. He wanted to be a doctor. He got two scholarships to college. He was the top cadet in ROTC. I knew that Kevin struggled with sadness. But I just gave him a bunch of Mom advice: ‘exercise more, ‘sleep more,’ ‘eat more vegetables.’ I tried to pray it away. I wrote letters to God, asking to lift Kevin’s ‘spirit of depression.’ And we didn’t tell anyone. I thought: ‘He’s doing so well in school. Don’t rock the boat.’ We kept it a secret. So I think we share in what happened.”