With the recent news of deplorable conditions at Walter Reed grabbing headlines, and continuing casualties of conflicts ... and being a product of the 60s, I can never hear of the loss of service personnel without thinking of families ... this story about Gold Star Mothers is particularly timely and poignant.

Many of us from the era of the Vietnam war will remember Gold Star Mothers, as some of the moms we knew ... moms of friends and family ... joined the group after losing children in that war. Those women are now in their 70s and 80s, still meeting if they can and still attending to the needs of veterans.

For many now, however, the name of the organization won't ring bells ... a testament to what a few decades of relative peace can do for mothers.

The group was founded by Grace Seibold, whose son, George, went missing in action in World War I. It was named for the gold stars families hung in their windows to honor a son or daughter who died in the service.

The Gold Stars have always seen their mission as twofold: comfort one another and turn grief to action, reaching out to American veterans by volunteering in hospitals, halfway houses and anywhere else they are needed.

Gold Star chapter memberships had been dwindling, and although enrollment topped 30,000 at one time during the eight decades of the organization, it was down to around 900. Just as the remaining groups of Gold Star Mothers are moving into rest homes, however, new members are finding the group.

The thinning of the ranks wasn't a bad thing, or so thought Betty Jean Pulliam, the group's 81-year-old president. Years of peacetime had reduced the number of sons and daughters killed in action the way her Dale was taken by Vietnamese mortar fire on Mother's Day 1967. And that is exactly the way the mothers had hoped their beloved organization would fade into the history books, happily rendered obsolete.

But the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have killed more than 3,500 U.S. soldiers, sailors and Marines, creating a wave of newly qualified Gold Star candidates. Now, the women who sent their sons to Korea, Vietnam and other battlefields — most well into their 80s — feel a renewed sense of duty to keep on, sustaining the memories of their lost children and consoling a new generation of bereft mothers.

The article and the Gold Star Mothers website are well worth a read.

Membership to Gold Star Mothers can be applied for here.