For Richard: White Star Families and the Grief America Doesn't See

This episode is personal.

Released on the first day of PTSD Awareness Month, this podcast shines a light on White Star Families — the families of veterans and service members lost to suicide. Unlike Gold Star Families, who receive federal recognition and public honor, White Star Families carry their grief largely in silence, without official acknowledgment, and too often without the support they deserve.

Every year in the United States, approximately six thousand veterans die by suicide. That is seventeen families every single day who wake up carrying a loss the world does not always know how to acknowledge.

This episode is dedicated to Army Sergeant First Class Richard David Tarmy — born October 26th, 1969, who served his country in Operation Iraqi Freedom with the United States Army Signal Corps, and who was lost on March 25th, 2013. This episode is for Richard, for his family, and for every White Star Family carrying a grief America doesn't always see.

If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 and press 1 for the Veterans Crisis Line. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to a very special and meaningful Brentwood Joe's Time Hom podcast. This podcast exists because of Brentwood, because of this community, because of the belief that when people are informed, when they feel seen, and when they know they are not alone, things get better. This episode exists for a different reason. Someone close to this podcast lost a brother. A man who put on the uniform of the United States military, who deployed to Iraq, who came home, and who, in the silence after coming home, lost a battle that no one could see him fighting. He was a veteran, he was a son, he was a brother, and his family has carried that loss ever since. This episode is for him, and it is for every family in this country who knows exactly what that sentence means. Their loss has a name. It is time more people knew it. There are families in this country who have given everything. They sent someone they loved into the United States military. They endured the deployments, the long silences, the worry that never quite goes away. They welcomed that person home. Or they tried to. And then, in the quiet aftermath of service, in the space where healing was supposed to happen, they lost them anyway. Not to a bullet on a battlefield, not to an IED on a dusty road overseas. They lost them to a war that followed their loved one home. A war fought inside the mind in the dark hours of the night and the unbearable weight of invisible wounds that the world could not see and that our systems were not equipped to treat in time. These families have a name. They are called White Star Families. And most Americans have never heard of them. To understand what a White Star family is, it helps to understand the broader language that surrounds military service and sacrifice in this country. Most people are familiar with the term Gold Star Family. A Gold Star family is one that has lost an immediate family member, a spouse, a parent, a child, a sibling, who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces in an active combat zone or as a direct result of their military service. The Gold Star designation dates back to World War I, when families would hang a service flag in their window, a blue star for each family member serving, and a gold star sewn over the blue if that service member was killed. It became one of the most recognized symbols of sacrifice in American history. Blue star families are those with an active duty service member currently serving. They carry the weight of ongoing deployment, of uncertainty, of a loved one in harm's way right now. And then they're white star families. A white star family is one that has lost a close relative, a veteran or active duty service member to suicide. That is the definition. Simple in words, devastating in reality. The numbers behind white star families are staggering and they deserve to be spoken out loud. Every single year in the United States, approximately 6,000 veterans die by suicide. That is not a typo. 6,000 every year. That works out to roughly 17 veterans lost to suicide every single day. 17 families every day who wake up the next morning as white star families, whether they know that term or not. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among veterans under the age of 45. It claims more veteran lives annually than combat operations. More veterans have died by suicide since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began than have died in those wars themselves. That is a fact that should stop every American in their tracks. And the ripple effect does not stop with the veteran. Research consistently shows that for every person who dies by suicide, an average of 135 people are significantly impacted. Family members, friends, colleagues, fellow service members. When the math is applied to 6,000 veteran suicides per year, that means roughly 800,000 people in this country are affected by veteran suicide loss every single year. 800,000 people every year. That is not a footnote. That is a national crisis. So why haven't most people heard the term white star family? Part of the answer lies in recognition, or more precisely, the lack of it. Gold Star families have federal recognition. They have ceremonies. They have a designated day, Gold Star Mothers and Families Day, observed on the last Sunday of September each year. They have access to specific government benefits. They are honored at memorials, at sporting events, at community gatherings. The nation has built an infrastructure of acknowledgement around their grief, and rightly so. Their loss is real. Their sacrifice is profound, and they deserve every bit of that recognition. White star families have none of that. There is no federal designation for white star families. There is no official government recognition. There is no dedicated day of remembrance. There are no specific federal benefits tied to their loss. In the eyes of the government, the death of a veteran by suicide does not carry the same weight as a death in combat. Even though the veteran's service, the veteran sacrifice, and the veteran's wounds were just as real. This is not a political statement. It is simply a description of a gap, a profound, painful gap between what these families have given and what they have received in return. The grief of a White Star family is also different in ways that are important to understand. When a gold star family loses someone in combat, the grief is wrapped in a framework of honor. There are ceremonies, there are flags, there are communities that rally around the family with a shared understanding of what happened and why. The loss is public, acknowledged, and mourned collectively. When a white star family loses someone to suicide, the grief is often wrapped in silence and sometimes in shame. Suicide still carries a stigma in American culture. Even in 2026, even after years of growing mental health awareness, there are communities where suicide is spoken of in hushed tones, where families feel they cannot fully explain what happened, where the cause of death is softened or omitted entirely in obituaries and conversations. That stigma is painful enough for any family. For a military family, it can be compounded by a culture that prizes strength, resilience, and self-sufficiency. A culture that can make it even harder to admit that someone was struggling or to seek help before it was too late. White star families often carry questions that gold star families do not. They ask themselves whether they missed the signs. They wonder whether they could have done something differently. They replay conversations looking for the moment they might have intervened. They grieve not just the loss of a person, but the loss of the future they imagined. And they do it while carrying a weight of guilt and confusion that is uniquely brutal. And they do much of this alone, because the systems designed to support military families were not built with them in mind. The organizations that are working to change this deserve recognition. The Valor Institute has been one of the leading voices in bringing attention to White Star families. Their work focuses on what they call the unseen crisis, the reality that tens of thousands of families are navigating this specific kind of grief without the resources, the recognition, or the community support they need. The Valor Institute provides education, advocacy, and direct support resources for White Star families, and their website at Valorinstitute.org is one of the best starting points for anyone who wants to learn more. One Tribe Foundation, formerly known as 22Kill, a name that referenced the then estimated 22 veteran suicides per day, runs dedicated White Star family workshops. These workshops bring together families who have experienced this specific kind of loss, creating a community of people who understand each other's grief in a way that outsiders simply cannot. The power of that shared understanding cannot be overstated. Grief is isolating. Grief that carries stigma is even more so. A room full of people who have walked the same road, who do not need to explain themselves, who do not flinch at the details, can be transformative. TAPS, the tragedy assistance program for survivors, is another critical resource. TAPS serves all military loss survivors, including White Star families, and provides peer support, grief camps for children, and a national network of people who have experienced military loss. Their resources are available through MilitaryOnesource. The Red Star Foundation focuses specifically on the families of veterans lost to suicide, providing support and advocacy for a community that has too often been overlooked. Their work is a direct acknowledgement that these families exist, that their grief matters, and that they deserve dedicated support. Veterans Bridge Home explicitly names White Star families in their mission, working to connect these families with the resources and community they need to survive their loss and eventually to find a path forward. These organizations are doing extraordinary work, but they are doing it largely without the federal recognition and funding that would allow them to reach every family that needs them. That is where advocacy comes in. That is where awareness comes in. That is where every person listening to this podcast comes in. There is a conversation happening in Washington, slowly, imperfectly, but happening, about whether White Star families should receive formal federal recognition. The argument for recognition is straightforward. These families served. The veteran who died by suicide wore the uniform. They took the oath. They deployed, or they trained, or they stood ready. They came home carrying wounds, wounds that were real, wounds that were connected to their service, wounds that ultimately proved fatal. The family that loved them sacrificed alongside them every step of the way. They deserved to be seen. Recognition would not just be symbolic. Federal recognition could open doors to benefits, to funding for support organizations, to dedicated research into the specific needs of this population. It could reduce the stigma by sending a clear message from the highest levels of government that suicide loss is not a shameful secret. It is a wound of war, and the families who carry it deserve honor, not silence. There have been legislative efforts in this direction. Bills have been introduced in Congress to formally recognize White Star families. Progress has been slow, but the conversation is alive, and public awareness is one of the most powerful tools available to move it forward. When communities know the term White Star Family, when neighbors and co-workers and fellow citizens can name what these families have experienced, it becomes harder to ignore. It becomes harder to leave them out of the ceremonies, the benefits, the acknowledgments that other military families receive. Language matters. Recognition starts with a name. There are things that every person listening can do right now, today, to support white star families. The first and most important thing is simply to learn the term and use it. Language is powerful. When someone says gold star family, people understand immediately what that means. White star families deserve the same clarity, the same immediate recognition. Use the term, explain it to others, share this episode. The more people who know what a White Star family is, the harder it becomes to leave them in the shadows. The second thing is to support the organizations doing this work. The Valor Institute, One Tribe, TAPS, the Red Star Foundation, Veterans Bridge Home. These organizations need funding, volunteers, and visibility. A donation, a social media share, a mention to a friend. Every bit of support helps them reach more families. The third thing is to reach out to any White Star family in the community. This is perhaps the most important and the most difficult. When someone loses a loved one to suicide, the people around them often pull back. Not out of cruelty, but out of discomfort. They do not know what to say. They are afraid of saying the wrong thing. So they say nothing. They stay away. And the family, already isolated in their grief, becomes more so. The right thing to do is to show up. It does not require perfect words. It does not require answers. It requires presence. A phone call, a meal, a text that says simply, I am thinking of you. White star families do not need anyone to fix their grief. They need to know they are not invisible. The fourth thing is to contact elected representatives at the state level and the federal level and ask them where they stand on recognition for White Star families. Ask them what they are doing to support Ventreton mental health funding. Ask them what resources exist in the state for families navigating this kind of loss. Elected officials respond to constituent pressure. They respond to awareness. They respond when the people they represent make clear that something matters. And the fifth thing, perhaps the most urgent, is to know the number. The Veterans Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Veterans, active duty service members, and their families can call or text 988 and then press 1. They can also chat online at Veterans Crisis Line.net. If there is a veteran in the community who is struggling, if there is a family member who is worried, that number is the first call to make. It is confidential, it is staffed by people who understand military culture and military trauma, and it saves lives. There is something that needs to be said plainly because it is at the heart of why this topic matters. The veterans who died by suicide were not weak. They were not failures. They were not people who gave up. They were people who were carrying wounds that the human mind and body can only bear for so long. There were people who needed help, and in too many cases, the help was not there, or it was not enough, or it came too late. The military trains people to be strong. It trains people to push through pain, to keep moving, to never show weakness. Those qualities save lives in combat. They can be lethal in the aftermath of trauma. A culture that equates asking for help with weakness is a culture that loses people who could have been saved. The families left behind did not fail their loved ones. They loved them. They worried about them. They tried to reach them, and now they carry a grief that is unlike almost any other. A grief that is complicated by questions that will never be fully answered. By a loss the world does not always know how to acknowledge. By a silence where recognition should be. White star families deserve better than silence. They deserve a nation that says clearly and without hesitation, your loved one's service mattered, your sacrifice mattered, your grief is seen, your loss is honored, and you are not alone. That is the message of this episode. Not a political message, not a partisan message, a human message. There are families in every state, in every community, in every corner of this country who are carrying this grief right now. Some of them know the term White Star family, many of them do not. Many of them have never heard anyone say out loud that what they are going through has a name, and that there are others who understand, that there are people fighting to make sure they are not forgotten. This episode is for them. And it is a call to everyone listening to be part of the change. Learn the name, share the story, support the organizations. Reach out to the families, contact the representatives, know the number. Because the measure of a community, the measure of a nation, is not just how it honors those who fall in battle, it is how it treats those who fall in the silence after the battle is over. It is whether it shows up for the families who are left behind, regardless of how the loss happened, regardless of whether the wound was visible. White Star families showed up for this country. It is time for this country to show up for them. This episode was made in honor of Army Sergeant First Class Richard David Tarmey, a soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, who came home carrying wounds no one could see, and who was lost on March 25th, 2013. He was 43 years old. Rick, this one's for you. And it's for the family he left behind, a family that loves him still, that misses him still, and that deserves to know that grief is not invisible and his service is not forgotten. If there's a White Star family in the Brentwick community or anywhere listening, know this. You are seen. What your family gave was real. What you carry is real, and you do not have to carry it alone. The resources at the end of this episode are not just information, they are a lifeline. Please share them with anyone who needs them. For more information and resources, Valor Institute at Valor Institute.org slash white dash star dash families. One Tribe Foundation at numeral one TribeFoundation.org. Taps at taps.org Red Star Foundation at Red Star Foundation.org. Call or text nine eight eight and press one. Thank you for listening. Keep our first responders and military in mind. Thank them for what they do when you see them. Let them know how important they are. Tonight, please say a prayer for my friend Greg. And for every White Star family caring agree, the little listen always.