11. Chasm Separates the Navy Gold Star Program and the DoD

Reading the phrase, “taking care of our own,” engenders a feeling of discomfort, unease, and makes me wince. “Taking care of our own” is exclusive. It infers that one will only care for someone ‘like them.’ Its racist, selfish, and lacking intellect.

The phrase’s racist tone alone, should cause the Navy Gold Star Program (NGSP) to rethink the language it chooses to use on its homepage— “We are dedicated to delivering on the promise of taking care of our own by providing support to surviving families.”

In a September 22, 2022 memorandum Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin, writes, “The Department of Defense has a sacred obligation to take care of our Service members and families.”

Secretary Austin does not use the phrase “our own.” Nor does he “promise” anything. He instead states the DoD has a “sacred obligation,” meaning a responsibility or a moral duty. A promise would infer a vow, an oath, or an assurance to do a particular thing. There is no duty in a promise, no obligation. A promise can be broken, while an obligation remains.

If the words on the homepage of the Navy Gold Star Program do not accurately embody the messaging of the DoD, is this just the beginning of the missteps within a prominent Navy program that supports the families of the fallen?

Navy Gold Star families give their time, their energy, their care to support so many others. It is extraordinary that they commit to giving of themselves after losing their loved one in service to our nation.

The service members who sacrifice their lives for our nation do not reduce their commitment to merely taking care of “their own.” Whether working alongside NATO countries, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam, or in Korea, Service Members fight for democracy, fight for freedom, and fight for others—not merely “their own.”

My criticism of the words the NGSP chooses to describe its services, its program, has to do with why those specific words were chosen and how it signals a greater chasm between the NGSP and the DoD. These words signal an outdated patriarch wrought with exclusivity. One can hear the voices of the past bellowing,“you’re not one of us, you’re not welcome.”

This chasm between the DoD and the Navy allows for the NGSP to take on a life of its own, far from the policies of the DoD, and hidden from view of the Chief of Naval Operations, where the program initiated in 2014. Colter and I were already married when the NGSP was given the privilege of viewing my husband’s PII in Allison’s file without his knowledge or permission. Colter, however, was no longer able to see Allison’s records or PII as he was remarried.

The NGSP tracked my husband and Sailor, as the real-time “husband” of his late wife, living at the address he shares with us, his family. Anyone who views info on Colter in this program would not know he was married with a family, and they would approach him as the 2009 actively grieving widower that he once was.

On the NGSP side of this chasm, we do not exist in Colter’s public Navy life. Yet—the Navy’s Marketing Department does.

Stay tuned…

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Excerpt from Navy Gold Star Homepage