As an Army widow, I will never forget how ordinary Americans honored my husband

On Nov. 2, 2023, I lost my husband Andy in a Humvee accident during an Army Reserve training exercise in Virginia. He was a captain. He was four months shy of his 28th birthday. We had a 17-month-old daughter named Adalyn, we were in the middle of building a home, and we had just received pre-approval on a 200-acre farm, a purchase we had dreamed of for years. None of that mattered by 2:20 that afternoon, when I picked up the phone and heard his commanding officer say words, I asked him to text me, because my ears were ringing and the walls felt like they were caving in.

Three days later, I drove to Virginia Commonwealth University trauma center in Richmond with my family, to bring Andy home. A hearse from the funeral home in Edinburg met us there. Andy's commanding officer was waiting in uniform, with the straight back and stoic features you would expect from an Army officer. He gave me the tightest hug of my life, and as we separated, his legs buckled and he sank to his knees.

I figured the drive home would be a quiet two and a half hours. A small procession behind a white hearse with green markings, my brother-in-law at the wheel, my family, Andy's brothers and a few friends following. I expected solemn. I expected uneventful.

I was wrong about all of it.

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The first overpass should have been a hint. I glanced up from a text on my phone and saw a fire engine parked across the bridge, an American flag draped over its side, three uniformed firefighters holding fast at salute as we approached. This is for Andy, I realized. This is for us.

A few miles down, another overpass appeared, and on it another fire engine, this one with its ladder raised and maybe a dozen uniformed firefighters standing centered over a massive American flag hanging down across the railing. Saluting. The sight was awe-inspiring and emotionally wrenching all at once. I held my gaze on that overpass until it shrank from view in the rear window, touched by the kindness of strangers and wishing only that I had thought to take a picture.

As it turned out, I would have plenty more chances.

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I could see the next overpass coming in the distance, what appeared to be tiny figurines standing before a toy fire truck. As we drew closer, I saw another American flag, this one held high by a pair of firefighters in dress uniforms saluting with their free hands. They had been joined by civilians who came on their own. Men, women, children and even toddlers little older than my daughter standing at salute.

We passed under around 35 overpasses on the way home. Firefighters maintained a stoic, reserved, respectful presence on almost every one of them. American heroes themselves, paying tribute to a fallen soldier they had never met. And it was not just the overpasses. People had pulled off the highway onto the shoulder of the road and were saluting us as we passed. I could not believe the multitude of strangers who paid their respects along the way.

I learned later that our friend Josh had helped arrange it. I had called him a few days earlier and asked if he could organize a small homecoming on Main Street in Woodstock for friends and family. I had not expected a homecoming that spanned the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive.

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Josh was a volunteer firefighter, and he knew the right people to call at the various municipalities along Route 64 and Route 81. His wife, Amanda, arranged for a professional photographer and videographer so that Andy's final ride home would be preserved forever, mainly for Adalyn to watch one day when she is old enough to appreciate it.

One of the men in Andy's unit, Mike, happened to also be a police officer in Richmond. He led the procession from the medical examiner's office onto I-95. From there, local and state police took over from one another at regular intervals along the highway. At one point, they closed off access to the interstate to allow our small line of vehicles an unimpeded merge up the ramp. "This is what they do for the president," my brother-in-law said.

No one had warned me about any of it. They wanted it to be a surprise, a pleasant shock in stark contrast to the one I had been handed three days before. That was especially true of one of the last tributes we passed under: a giant American flag suspended between two cranes over Route 81, flanked by ordinary people who wanted to show their support with a wave, a salute, a sign, or just a smile. I wish we could have stopped, so I could have thanked every single one of them.

Closer to home, the overpasses gave way to something equally inspiring. Farm equipment was parked along the outer edges of Route 81 for the last 35 miles between Harrisonburg and Woodstock. Not random farmers. Andy's customers. Andy worked in agriculture and he treated the farmers he serviced like family. Now they were lining the road with their tractors, pickers, backhoes, loaders, cultivators and balers, standing before their machines in sad stoicism with a salute or a wave.

I did not know their politics. I did not know who they voted for or what teams they rooted for. I did not know their dreams or their failures, their tragedies or their celebrations. I just knew they had showed up.

We had set out for Richmond in the bright sunshine of early morning, a roughly two-and-a-half-hour drive. It took us four hours to get home, thanks to the endless memorial displays of tribute.

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I wish it had stretched on forever.

Our police escort guided us slowly along Main Street in Woodstock toward the funeral home. My neighbors stood lining the roadside, on their porches, in their front yards, waving the souvenir American flags attached to a stick. It looked like the Fourth of July. Pastor Nate stood with one foot in the road and the other on the sidewalk, crying as he held the Emanuel Church flag overhead, the same flag that had welcomed us to Woodstock years before.

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Andy had a line-of-duty death. Technically, that means I was handed the ceremonial folded flag at his funeral the following Friday. The Army actually provided three: one for me, one for Adalyn, and a third I gave to Andy's Uncle Wayne. I have struggled, every day since, with whether I deserve to call myself a military widow. Andy did not die in Afghanistan or Iraq. He died in a training accident, on American soil, on a Thursday afternoon, four minutes after texting a friend that he would call him back in 15.

But what I learned on the road home from Richmond is that this country does not measure that distinction the way I did. The firefighters on those overpasses did not ask where Andy died, or how, or whether his death counted. They climbed up there in dress uniforms and held a flag and stood at salute for a stranger because he had worn the uniform, and he was not coming home.

On Memorial Day, I will think about all of them. The firefighters. The farmers. The neighbors with the little flags on sticks. Pastor Nate weeping on Main Street. The strangers who pulled their cars onto the shoulder of the highway because a hearse was passing. None of them knew Andy. All of them showed up for him.

That is what Memorial Day is. Not a sale, not a long weekend, not the start of summer. It is a country deciding, on its own, without being asked, to stand on an overpass and salute.