War's heavy toll: A widow's anniversary

War's heavy toll: A widow's anniversary


By John Ramsey Staff writer

Army Spc. Josiah Crumpler's shirts are rolled neatly in the drawers of his widow's bedroom, just the way he left them. The dress green suit he wore at their wedding hangs in the coat closet near the front door.

Monday night, Shana Crumpler unrolled one of his black Ed Hardy T-shirts and wore it to bed. It smelled like her fallen husband.

She tossed and turned, hardly able to sleep.

Tuesday was a dreadful anniversary. A year earlier, officers knocked on her door to give her the news. Josiah Dennis Crumpler, the man she married before he shipped off to Afghanistan, was dead.

On Tuesday, Shana Crumpler's in-laws - Josiah's parents - drove from Hillsborough to pick her up at her Hope Mills home to visit Josiah's grave in Princeton. They worried that her sorrow might impair her driving.

"I just felt like (Tuesday) was like another funeral I was about to attend, just this year there was less of a crowd," Shana said.
read more here
War's heavy toll