Children write letters to dads lost in line of duty

On Father’s Day, Haley Hartwick usually stops by Texas Roadhouse, which was her father’s favorite restaurant, to get a takeout dinner of steak and potatoes. She then likes to go home and watch “Quest for Camelot,” a film they enjoyed watching together.

Her father, Army Chief Warrant Officer Michael Hartwick, was killed in 2006 in Iraq when his helicopter was shot down by enemy fire. She was 10 years old.

“I usually pay tribute to him with little things,” said Hartwick, 22, who lives in Reston, Virginia. “Father’s Day has a bit of a bittersweet, melancholy feeling.”

She and other children who lost a father in the line of duty wrote letters to their dads for Father’s Day this year in part as a grief exercise, in part to honor their fathers’ legacies — and also to be part of a project started by the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation, a nonprofit organization that pays full tuition for gold-star children to attend college.

The Father’s Day letterwriting initiative began because more than 97 percent of service members killed in the line of duty are men, according to the foundation, leaving most of the foundation’s beneficiaries feeling adrift on that day.

For Hartwick, writing the letter helped her feel closer to the father she lost years ago, she said.

“I felt a sense of peace after I wrote it,” she said.

And it felt fitting, because she has a postcard her father wrote her on the day he died, April 1, 2006.

“I have his last words to me that he left me,” she said. “And I feel like I’m leaving this letter for him.”

She paraphrased his last letter to her as saying: “I am writing because I was thinking of you this morning. Only three more months until I get to see you. Please take care of your mother and brother.”

Her Father’s Day letter to him reads, in part: “To my pilot, my hero, my sweet father, this day is for you. ... You still serve as my inspiration and the person that fuels my passion. I only hope to make you proud & continue to achieve the dreams you had for me.”

She ends her letter, “Love always, your little girl Haley.”

Hartwick graduated last year from Baylor University with a degree in social work, a profession she chose because she wants to help people, the same motivation her father had when he joined the Army, she said. She works for the Virginiabased Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation as its development administrator.

Many of the letters are filled with grief, but also with gratitude. And each letter shows that even though their fathers are gone, the children still very much want their fathers to be proud of them.

“Daddy, I miss you. This is the one unwavering fact of my existence,” writes Johanna Walker, 21, now a college student. “I will miss you every day until I die but that is not a bad thing. I know there is something stronger than my grief, which is my love for you and your love for me.”

Walker’s father, Army Col. Cliff Walker, died saving his son from drowning in 2007.

“You lived your life so profoundly, Daddy. The example of your life is the greatest gift you could have ever given me. ... You, even in your last moments — especially in your last moments — taught me how to live.”

Walker, who lives in Texas, wrote that she wants to be a nurse to save lives, just as her father saved her brother’s life. Walker is studying community health at Tufts University.

“You used to sing ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ every night and I took it to heart, Daddy,” she wrote. “You raised a little girl with the knowledge that nothing could keep her from her dreams and now that little girl is a young woman who possesses a firm belief in her potential.”