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It had started raining and didn’t look to be letting up.
The downpour wasn’t unusual for Smith Barracks, but in the early Springtime, the gray skies made the normally verdant Baumholder hills look neon in contrast.
Sonia Rogowski, though, only smiled.
“I think this is my husband,” she said, looking around at the gust of wind and rain swirling around her. “His way of saying ‘Hi.’ He used to love playing pranks on me.”
She stuck a hand out, allowing the rain to puddle inside her palm, and laughed.
“This would be just like him.”
Rogowski is a Gold Star spouse, surviving her late husband, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lucasz Rogowski. Although two years have passed since her husband’s death, the grieving stays constant, she said.
On April 4, the installation held a commemoration ceremony for Gold Star family members, culminating in a bench dedication—a small token of appreciation for the sacrifices made by military families like the Rogowskis.
The term “Gold Star” comes from the Service Flag, which includes a blue star for every immediate family member serving in the U.S. armed forces during any period of war or hostilities. If that loved one died, a gold star replaced the blue star to allow community members to know the price the family paid in the cause of freedom.
There are countless ways to honor Gold Star families, but the ceremony and the bench dedication was Smith Barracks’ way of paying respect not for one day, not for a week, but for future generations to come, said Col. Reid Furman, U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz commander.
“The hope is that when someone sits on this bench and looks out over Minick Field here on Baumholder, they’re reminded of those who were lost and the courage, resiliency and sacrifice of the Gold Star family members left behind,” he said.
Furman, though not a Gold Star family member himself, knows the weight of grief and memory carried by surviving family members. In his 24 years in the U.S. Army, he’s deployed to Afghanistan five times, losing comrades-in-arms — friends — during that time.
In his remarks during the ceremony, Furman shared a memento, a personal token he keeps close to him as a means of remembering the fallen.
“I have a workout shirt with the names of the men and women who died in my battalion between 2004 and 2018,” Furman said, pausing as if recalling a moment, carefully cataloging it within his memory. “I know 13 of the names on that shirt. When I wear it, I am stronger. When I wear it, I somehow find the strength to always do one more set, push out one more rep. Each of those names left behind a Gold Star spouse, Gold Star mother, Gold Star kids. I’m stronger because of them and for them.”
During the bench dedication ceremony, the rain started to come down harder, and the wind blew wilder. Like a trickster, a gust swept underneath Sonia’s umbrella, turning it inside out.
“It’s okay,” she chuckled, folding it back out. “He’s here.”
And so, with hair wind-blown and matted by the rain, Sonia stood unbothered, holding a framed picture of her husband during the ceremony’s invocation. The rain underfoot seeped through the cracks of the cold, hard concrete, feeding the life and verdure underneath.
