{"id":22099,"date":"2010-09-29T16:21:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T16:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/la_times-for_parents_of_war_dead_the_combat_doesnt_end\/"},"modified":"2010-09-29T16:21:44","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T16:21:44","slug":"la_times-for_parents_of_war_dead_the_combat_doesnt_end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=22099","title":{"rendered":"LA Times&#8211;For parents of war dead, the combat doesn&#39;t end"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The week that Army Spc. Thomas K. Doerflinger was killed in Iraq at age 20, a friend in the neighborhood brought his parents a felt banner with a gold star. Tradition holds that a grieving mother hangs it in her window until the war is over. As it turned out, the war outlasted the banner.<\/p>\n<p>Years passed; the red border faded. Repairmen who came to their door on leafy Collingwood Terrace would innocently inquire, then stammer their condolences. The Doerflingers didn&#8217;t feel right displaying a kind of grief that was never going to go away, so after a while they put the banner in the hutch.<\/p>\n<p>Endings can be complicated for families of the fallen.<\/p>\n<p>When President Obama announced the conclusion of combat operations in Iraq this month, Lee Ann Doerflinger didn&#8217;t feel any closer to that magical &#8220;closure&#8221; everyone talks about. In some ways, she felt worse.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-iraq-war-dead-20100929,0,679640,full.story\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The week that Army Spc. Thomas K. Doerflinger was killed in Iraq at age 20, a friend in the neighborhood brought his parents a felt banner with a gold star. Tradition holds that a grieving mother hangs it in her<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=22099\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,39,40,101,438,143,141,98,106,184,177,129,34,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-life-church-life","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-children","category-death-burial-funerals","category-defense-national-security-military","category-iraq-war","category-marriage-family","category-military-armed-forces","category-parish-ministry","category-pastoral-theology","category-psychology","category-theology","category-young-adults"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}