Paul Sassone

It didn’t seem unusual to me.

Didn’t all houses have that small piece of purple cloth with a gold star hanging in the front window? At least I couldn’t remember when the little banner wasn’t in my grandparents” — thankfully — the gold star banner was not in every front widow. Because the Gold Star meant someone from that household had been killed in the service. As the Army states, a Gold Star in the window “allowed members of the community to know the price that the family had paid in the cause of freedom.”

The price my family paid was named Vincent Howard. He was my mother’s brother and best man at my parents’ wedding.

I only know him from photos lovingly preserved in a glass-fronted cabinet in my grandparents’ living room. Grouped around a Purple Heart medal were pictures of Lt. Vincent Howard in uniform, in his leather flying jacket, of him atop a camel in North Africa.
Lt. Howard was part of the force gathering to invade Sicily in 1943.

He was pilot of a paratroop transport. And he was shot down and killed over Gela, Sicily.
And so, a Gold Star took the place — but could never replace — the son, brother, uncle who paid the price for freedom.

But his family paid a price, too. My grandparents kept that little shrine, kept that Gold Star in the window all the rest of their lives.

And until the day she died more than 60 years later the very mention of her brother’s name dissolved my mother in tears.

So, I know personally what a Gold Star means, what it represents.
What I don’t know is how a candidate for president of the United States can attack a Gold Star family.

But that’s what Donald Trump did in his verbal assault on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, parents of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in action.

The Khans appeared at the Democrats convention. Khizr Khan criticized Trump. His wife stood with him but said nothing.

Trump could have responded in several ways. For instance, he could have said he was sorry for the Khans’ loss and moved on. He could have said nothing at all.

Instead, he chose the school-yard bully approach. As if he were a petulant child, Trump tweeted — he hit me first. Aren’t I allowed to hit him back? And he did.

What’s to be gained by a candidate for president of the United States getting into a fight with parents who have lost a son who died defending the United States?

There you have me.

You’ll have to seek an answer to that question from the half of America that is backing Trump’s candidacy.

–What’s to be gained by attacking Gold Star family?–