Gary Ward

Gary Ward sat down with me for Heroes Live.

Gold Star family. He lost a son in service to this country. Christian. Thank you is not enough. He still showed up. Carla too. She giggled through half of it.

Southeast Ohio. Rural. Single mother. Two siblings. Mom worked as a waitress. They were poor. Grandfather came in and showed them the path. Woods behind the house. Bows. Trees. Dams. Trying to chase the beavers out. Grandpa taught two things. Be mechanically inclined. Get an education. Gary took the first one.

He started digging graves by hand. Seventy-acre city cemetery. Appalachian ground. Six feet at the low end. Old markers from the 1700s. You had to be tender. Two men on seventy acres. A West Virginia hand told him to take the fancy gloves off. Spit on your hands. Dump that wheelbarrow again and you reload it yourself. Then highway. Then wastewater. EPA license. He raised six children middle class on that work.

Wyatt is a staff sergeant. Military police at Fort Belvoir. Tina teaches eleventh grade English in Charlotte. Jordan is Air National Guard full time at Rickenbacker. Jace is becoming an RN at Malone in Canton. Jevin is at Hocking. Wildlife management. Same school his mother attended.

Christian went first. Six weeks after high school. Fort Jackson. Fort Eustis for aviation. First duty station Fort Carson. He is at Arlington. They drive over when they visit Wyatt. About twenty-five minutes south of D.C.

Mixed family. She had two. He had two. They had two together. Wyatt and a daughter a day apart. People thought twins. Christian and Jordan six months apart. Carla was a forest ranger. She brought wildlife home. They read to those kids.

He asked folks to call Congress on the Christian Ward Act. Protection for military families. Facebook is Tango 740. Chris's pictures. Deployments. Arlington. The scholarship work. He builds black powder rifles. Father-in-law's flintlock. Makes his own round balls. Makes his own patches. Happy to be happy. That is why we hit record. Get the story on tape before we are too old or too sick to tell it.