Operation Hug-A-Hero Reaches Out to a Gold Star Family

 

Photo courtesy of Operation Hug-A-Hero.

Operation Hug-A-Hero, a non-profit organization that provides “Daddy Dolls” to children of deploying troops, offered free “Daddy Dolls” to the three children of Staff Sgt. Brown. He was killed earlier this month a week after arriving in Afghanistan on his fourth deployment.

Hug-A-Hero executive director Lisa Berg reached out after hearing Ariell Taylor-Brown learned on Facebook that her husband had been killed two hours before Army officers arrives with official notice.

Lisa  wrote in the comments:

Operation Hug-A-Hero would like to help this family by providing dolls to her children. This is so sad and devastating. It should have never happened this way.

Operation Hug-A-Hero holds fund-raisers to cover the cost of providing the dolls to military children.

Military Spouse Learns of Husband’s Death on Facebook

Ariell Taylor-Brown (Photo courtesy NBC4i.com)

It’s happening more often with the growth of social media – a military family learns of the death of a loved one before official notice.

This time it was Ariell Taylor-Brown who learned of the death of her husband, Staff Sgt. Christopher Brown, two hours before Army soldiers arrived at her home with the official notice according to Columbus, Ohio station NBC4:

“I was told via Facebook,” said Taylor-Brown. “It was a girl in his platoon. She wrote to me and told me to call her immediately,” Taylor-Brown said.

Taylor-Brown called her, and the soldier told her of the death. Taylor-Brown, who has two children and is pregnant with the couple’s third was at home alone with the kids.

She told me over the phone, right in front of my kids and I completely had a meltdown. She wasn’t supposed to but I guess she took it on her own power to do it,” she said.

Staff Sgt. Brown had been in Afghanistan just a week, starting his fourth deployment, when he  was killed. Brown, was killed April 3 in Afghanistan after he died of wounds suffered in an IED attack according to milblogging.com.