Sun City Gold Star parents: ‘Don’t ever forget the people’

Memorial Day is hard at the Sun City Hilton Head home of Gold Star parents Bill and Lynn Knutson.

But all days are harder since their 27-year-old daughter gave her life for her country. It was March 11, 2013. She was training in a Black Hawk helicopter near Kandahar, Afghanistan. Something went wrong, and five of America’s finest were killed.

Sara Knutson Cullen lived life full tilt. She was a newlywed. She was a captain in the U.S. Army, a member of the class of 2007 at West Point. Their motto on an insignia featuring the Twin Towers was “Always Remember Never Surrender.”

Today, we can remember Sara.

I called her parents Friday to see how they are doing. We hadn’t talked since the two New York natives calmly laid out their sadness to me three years ago. It was shortly after Bill’s heart was crushed when he answered the late-night knock on the door and saw two men in uniform.

“We’re doing,” Bill said Friday. “We’re doing.

“Obviously, she’s on our minds all the time. You never move on.”

Lynn sent me an email: “Thanks for remembering our Sara. We really appreciate it. The fact that people remember and hear her story is what helps us get through the days.”

In the end, Sara’s story is a love story. Her husband, Chris Cullen of Quincy, Mass., was also an Army Black Hawk pilot. They met when both were on duty in Alaska. When they married, he left active duty so he could stay near her. When she was deployed to Afghanistan, he went over with a private security contractor. He came home on a transport plane, watching over the flag-draped caskets.

“It took him a long, long time to get out of the doldrums,” said his father-in-law.

Pat Conroy

Memorial Day Weekend is a big deal in Sun City.

On Saturday, the best softball players challenge teams from Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah and the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. The military players bring their families, and everyone enjoys hot dogs.

The Knutsons plan to attend the Sun City Veterans Association service on Memorial Day.

Four or five times a year, they make unplanned trips to visit a tree planted in Sara’s honor at Fort Stewart, Ga., where she was stationed. Half the time, they run into others at her white-blooming crape myrtle on Warriors Walk.

It helps when others remember.

One of the biggest lifts came from a most unexpected place. It was after a memorial service for Sara in their home church, St. Gregory the Great Catholic in Bluffton.

“The turnout was phenomenal,” Bill said. “Lynn and I were doing the meet-and-greet afterward for a long line, and you know who came through? Pat Conroy. He quietly introduced himself. He said he read about Sara in the paper and wanted to pay his respects. It meant so much to us for him to take time to do that.”

Lynn is buoyed by her three granddaughters these days.

A second Knutson daughter is in the Army — Maj. Kelly Bear. She’s a pediatrician stationed in Hawaii. Lynn talks to her every day on the phone. And she heads to Hawaii at the drop of a hat.

‘Don’t forget’

The Knutsons honored the fallen troops in an unusual way two years ago.

They went to Georgia and walked nine miles up U.S. 17 with a man walking cross country, one kilometer for each of the almost 7,000 American troops who have not come home alive from the Global War on Terror.

Mike Viti was a fullback at Army, a year behind Sara. He won a Bronze Star while serving as an artillery officer in Afghanistan. He supports Gold Star families through a nonprofit called Legacies Alive.

“Don’t forget the fallen,” Bill said. “That’s why we did that walk.”

The Knutsons say the military has not forgotten them. They get together with other Gold Star parents — a time they spend celebrating promising young lives.

Bill said, “Whatever your thoughts are about whether we belong there, don’t forget the people who serve.”

Lynn is comforted by words Chris found on Sara’s computer after she died. It was in the prologue to a book that she had started writing.

“It somehow seemed appropriate that we found it, as it seemed to be a message to her family,” Lynn said.

It’s the love story that we honor on this Memorial Day.

“There is only one thing that I know for sure,” Sara wrote. “Only one fact in life that to me, is indisputable. Love is omnipotent. It cannot be defined, it cannot be measured and it cannot be compared. It only belongs to those two souls lucky enough to stumble upon it, and lives in the footprint that those two hearts leave behind. This is the lesson of my life, the piece of truth that I will gladly float upon into the eternity of history. For my story will not be one known to mankind, but my love was strong enough to change the world.”

This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 6:09 PM with the headline "Sun City Gold Star parents: ‘Don’t ever forget the people’."