Honor all who've sacrificed

For 14 years, my friend Jack has been working to correct a major flaw in the way America honors its war dead.

His mission - to end the disparity between how we treat those who are killed in combat and those who die while serving their country - seems so simple to fulfill.

It requires little money. It doesn't pit Republicans against Democrats. It doesn't hurt anybody. It simply would provide grieving families with a token but important symbol of our appreciation for their sacrifice.

We send our sons and daughters, husbands, wives and friends into harm's way, into blinding sandstorms, 130-degree heat, nonstop noise and violence. These soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines go willingly. If something horrible happens during combat, if they're injured or killed, we give them a Purple Heart. We put their names on a wall.

It's not much in exchange for precious life. But a small medallion on a ribbon can be held in the palm of a hand, can be pinned over the heart. It confirms for a mother that her child was brave. It gives a child tangible evidence of a parent's courage. It tells a wife that her husband died a hero.

Thousands of families who know the pain that comes with that knock on the door don't have such a medal. The names of their loved ones rarely go on memorial walls.

Why? Because they died in a helicopter or car crash in Afghanistan, or in a fire aboard a ship, in training exercises or by friendly fire. They get a military funeral. The family gets a folded flag and, later, a letter of condolence from the president.

The disparity seems wrong, Jack Warren thought to himself in 1997, when the Purple Heart Memorial was being built in his town, Enumclaw, Wash., and he was tasked with determining which service members were eligible to have their names inscribed on the wall. His research found that two-thirds were killed in action. The rest died in other ways. "They got only a letter from the president," he said, "but they're dead just like the other guy."

It's the same problem we have in Richmond with the Virginia War Memorial. The names of veterans of military service who were killed in action or were hostile casualties are inscribed on the memorial. The names of those who served in war but were killed in accidents - or died just doing their jobs - are not allowed.

Marine Lance Cpl. Darrell Schumann of Hampton spent three months in Fallujah in house-to-house combat. He died in 2005 in a helicopter crash on the way home. His name isn't on the memorial.

It should be.

Sadly, for two years our legislators have dithered over how to resolve this, once suggesting separate memorials for those who died in combat and those who didn't.

They should be ashamed.

There are no degrees of death. Service members killed in accidents are just as dead as those killed by enemy bombs. It hurts just as badly. They gave just as much. What possible reason would we have to not honor that gift?

People seem to think that creating a medal for those who die while serving their country honorably somehow diminishes the importance of other medals, such as the Purple Heart.

But a medal honoring a service member's sacrifice isn't meant to fill out a dress uniform. It's to help comfort his family. If it helps them deal with the loss, why wouldn't we do that?

My friend Jack, a Marine reservist and Navy Korean War veteran, had been working for three years to change this inequity when I met him in 2000. I was a reporter in Seattle, working on a story about 32 Marines who had died long ago in a plane crash on nearby Mount Rainier. Jack knew the stories of those young men - and dozens of others. They died serving their country, but none of their families got a medal.

Jack, 79, has been active in veterans issues for half a century. He's been Marine of the Year for the Marine Corps League in Washington state, in a position to know about veterans' health care concerns, to be outraged by the mismanagement at Arlington National Cemetery, to know firsthand the hardships that await service members returning from the horrors of war.

Thousands have given their lives since Jack began keeping track. The circumstances of their deaths shouldn't matter, but they do.

Now, however, my friend, who has worked hard to make his world a better, safer place, can no longer work to rectify this. Jack is dying. Health problems from his time in Korea "have caught up with me," he e-mailed recently. "My heart and lungs are failing."

He's done the research. Canada awards its Canadian Cross to the families of those who died on active duty. Establishing a similar token for the families of our fallen service members would take an act of Congress.

It doesn't seem like much to ask.

Candy Hatcher is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail: candy.hatcher@pilotonline.com.