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Sue Ann Wood: Gold Star Mom and Fallen Warriors Grant Recipient, August 2011
Sue Ann’s son, LCPL Mathew Puckett, was killed in action in Iraq on September 13th, 2004. A US Marine, Matthew won the Navy’s Bronze Star for bravery when, although badly wounded, he helped his comrades escape to safety when their armored vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Tragically, Matthew lost his life to a suicide bomber only six months after the attack on his armored vehicle. His death was devastating for his friends, family, and, especially, his mother Sue Ann, but there were two other young children to raise and she vowed to carry on and make their lives all that they could be.
Then, in 2010, Sue Ann’s world began to crumble. Mathew’s younger brother, now an adult, was off and beginning his own life, and his younger sister was close to doing the same, when the terrible trauma from her past caught up with Sue Ann. All of her strength and bravery couldn’t prevent the grief that she had suppressed from bubbling to the surface. She began crying and experiencing constant grief and anguish.
Unable to function on a day-to-day basis, she lost her job and had to subsist on a minimum wage job of 21 hours a week; she couldn’t find better employment. Her roommate—who helped pay the bills—told her that she could no longer handle the negativity and grief and moved out. Sue Ann’s daughter soon followed, for the same reason. Now she was really alone and spiraling down out of control. She told us, “I’d never felt so alone.”
Soon, faced with imminent eviction, she heard about the FallenWarriors Fund from another Gold Star Mom.* She came to our FallenWarriors website and filled out an application for aid. We contacted her quickly, and discovered that she had only days before she was to be evicted from her home. We held an emergency board meeting, and a check was on its way to her the next day. We worked with her to determine how we could help her most effectively. We paid for her rent for the upcoming month and supplemented her income for the same period of time. One of the Gold Star mom’s in Tracy, California offered to provide Sue Ann with a home and to help her find meaningful employment so that she could start rebuilding her life once again.
When she received her check, Sue Ann wrote to us and said, "Oh my God Ron…thank you…from the bottom of my heart." Continuing the next day with, "Thank you…and A BIG THANK YOU, TO YOU AND YOUR ORGANIZATION…without which I do not want to think about. Thank you."
Stories like Sue Ann’s are the reason for FallenWarriors' existence.
* Gold Star Moms are an organization, founded in 1928, for mothers of members of the armed services who have had a son or daughter killed in action or died as a result of a wound received in action. It is a national organization known as American Gold Star Mothers, Inc., a non-denominational, non-profitable and non-political organization.
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