Son ‘changed lives,’ Gold Star mom says
BENTONVILLE — Lightning struck Jill Stephenson’s house six years after her son died, igniting a fire that burned part of his casket flag.
She removes the flag from the base of a wooden display revealing a small, damaged corner. She rejected the offer to have it replaced, Stephenson says.
“I’m kind of damaged goods, you know? But we stay together,” she explains, brushing her fingers across the singed threads. “It’s like a battle scar, essentially.”
She displays the keepsake along with a Bible issued to her son by the Army Rangers, a stack of laminated photographs of her son and family pictures — all organized chronologically.
The collection honors her only son, 21-year-old Cpl. Ben Kopp, a U.S. Army Ranger who died July 18, 2009, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
Kopp was shot while exchanging gunfire in Helmand province, Afghanistan, on July 10. He had completed two tours in Iraq and was two months into his third and final tour.
Stephenson received an honor no one wants: the status of a Gold Star mother.
She watched a chaotic withdrawal in Afghanistan last week as the Taliban took control of the country after 20 years of U.S. occupation. She grieves for the 13 newly added Gold Star families.
“It was gut-wrenching,” she says.
Others in her military circle feel angry by what seemed to be a preventable catastrophe, she said of what appeared to be a hasty U.S. withdrawal. “Some of them are saying what a ‘waste of time, why were we there at all?’” she says, empathizing with their point of view.
“To say that was all for naught is something I don’t agree with. He changed lives.”
Her summation includes four lives Kopp directly saved by donating his heart, kidneys and liver, as well as 55 others who were enhanced by his bone, skin and tissue, she says.
She flips through photographs of her only son. They reveal an inquisitive outdoorsmen who loved spending time at his great-grandfather’s lake house. His single mother found a male role model in his great-grandfather, an infantryman in World War II who served in Africa and Italy. Kopp wanted to follow in his footsteps.
He asked his great-grandfather questions.
“My grandfather didn’t offer up a lot of information,” Stephenson recalls. “He was an open book if Ben asked questions. Ben wanted to know, what was it like to travel overseas? What was it like to dig a foxhole? Where did he get the shovel? Where did he get his tattoos from? What was it like to shoot weapons? Did he ever kill anybody?”
She remembers a 7-yearold Kopp peering into his great-grandfather’s curio cabinet noticing a Gold Star and Purple Heart, along with photos and certificates from the war.
The Army awarded Kopp a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, a Meritorious Service Medal, and badges for combat infantry and marksmanship.
Sept. 11, 2001, changed him. His great-grandfather had died five months before the twin towers fell, leaving Kopp grieving the loss of a man he idolized.
To him, the attack mocked his great-grandfather’s service to the country, and it made him very angry, Stephenson says. “So now, he wanted revenge. He was completely glued to the TV.”
Kopp joined the Army in his senior year of high school, completing the delayed entry program. He trained at Fort Benning, Ga., in the infantry, just as his great-grandfather did, a month after he graduated high school. He was assigned to a Ranger battalion.
Stephenson saw her son worry for the first time before his third deployment. The mission involved a high-value target, and Kopp expected the heaviest combat he had seen.
The company commander called Stephenson on July 10, 2009. Kopp had been shot in the leg and was undergoing surgery.
“I got a phone call telling me that he was in recovery essentially, so I really got thrust into this black hole of not knowing,” she says.
Kopp suffered a cardiac arrest while recovering from surgery. He never regained consciousness.
He arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on July 14. Doctors had placed him in a medically induced coma. They declared him brain dead July 18.
“He had his great-grandfather’s legacy. That was the foundation of who he became as a man, and that was always with him,” Stephenson says. “To leave the world a better place than when he found it. To save lives.”
Stephenson shares her son’s story to keep his memory alive. She’s made numerous appearances on national news programs and addressed a crowd of 1,100 at the national convention for the organization that handled his organ donation.
“I was the only voice left to tell his story,” she says. “If I stop talking about him, he ceases to exist.”