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In Memoriam

From Seattle Gay News: Margarethe Cammermeyer, who had fought a successful legal battle to be reinstated in the National Guard after disclosing she is a lesbian, is mourning the loss of her son, Andrew A. Hawken, who died in a tragic snowmobiling accident on March 2. "There is nothing as painful that I have ever experienced as losing a child. It doesn't really matter how old they are.You expect that they will be burying you, not that you will be burying them," she said. "People who have lost children in the past, they tell me the same thing, that the picture of their child is frozen in time. And everywhere you walk and everything you look at reminds you of them, or the last time you saw them, or the last conversation. And it's like with the death of President Kennedy, he never ages, and my son will never be older than 32." The Andy Hawken Fund has been established at Bank of America to help Hawken's wife, Elicia Ann Hawken, a registered nurse. "They had just gotten their feet on the ground, and had a home," said Cammermeyer. "In terms of trying to help her regroup after this horrendous event, it was established on her behalf by friends and family." Condolences to Cammermeyer can be e-mailed to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or mailed to: 4632 Tompkins Road, Langley, WA 98260. However, Cammermeyer requests a donation be made in honor of her son in lieu of flowers. "It would be much better to put whatever resources they had to some other cause. And if it's Andy's trust, that would be wonderful. Otherwise, they can send it to some place where someone else has lost a child, whether it is from AIDS or as a result of the war," she said. "It's a life-altering experience, losing a child. We are extremely cavalier about those who lose children in Iraq. Even though we may not like the war, it doesn't mean that the family doesn't have the same excruciating pain that I'm feeling." -----

03-21-07