By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 25, 2009
HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- When the envelope arrived, Windy Horner was talking with her husband, Nick -- Windy on a cell phone, Nick in the Blair County jail.
Windy did not recognize the return address. She feared hate mail; her husband is charged with killing two men and robbing a sandwich shop, and she blames his actions on post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in Iraq, but others do not agree.
''Just because horner went to iraq,'' read one reader comment on a newspaper Web site, ''doesnt mean he shouldnt get what he deserves!!!!!!!''
Now, she wondered: Should she open the envelope? Go ahead, Nick said.
The note was from a complete stranger, a woman named Laurie Claar. It was written on a card decorated with a rainbow and flowers, bearing the message, ''Caring Thoughts Are With You.''
''I'm not sure what to say to you all except I understand and you all are in my prayers,'' Claar wrote. ''And I don't think bad of Nick as he needs help to deal with PTSD.''
Her words reached a young couple sorely in need of encouragement.
On April 26, Laurie Claar sat in the darkness next to her son's grave, cradling a doll she dressed in the clothes he had worn as a newborn. She was waiting for the clock to strike 11:04 p.m.
Exactly 25 years before, Matthew Claar had been born.
''I just had to be there at that time,'' Claar said tearfully. It comforted her, she said, to remember a time when she could still protect her son.
More than seven months before his mother's vigil, fueled by guilt and PTSD, the Marine Corps veteran had pulled the trigger on the 9mm pistol in his mouth.read more here
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