An Operation Enduring Freedom veteran is speaking out about how her experience with casualty assistance led to a lifelong career of supporting other surviving spouses and children around the U.S.
Kimberly Hazelgrove and her husband Brian were both active-duty Army at Fort Campbell on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The operational tempo from that point on was obviously focused on what we were going to do in response,” she said.
Within three years, that response had left her without her career or her husband, after Brian, a helicopter pilot, died in Mosul, Iraq, in January 2004. He was survived by four children, and Kimberly was forced to leave the service after nine and half years as an intelligence officer.
“I was very bewildered and angry with my experience through the casualty process,” Hazelgrove said. “It felt antiquated. They always tell you that your family’s going to be taken care of if something ever happens to you. That gives us the autonomy to go forth and put our lives on the line in order to keep America safe, but it doesn’t always actually happen.”
Hazelgrove initially transferred her skills as an analyst to working for Lockheed Martin, but after she “came out of the fog” of her grief, she decided to put her energy towards reforming the military’s Casualty Assistance Program and serving on multiple Veterans Affairs committees.
“[Back then] when the surviving spouse went through this process, they were almost immediately told to pack up and leave the military base and to start your life anew,” she said. “Wherever you went after that, there was nothing in society to help you on that journey. No place to go back to ask questions to figure out the next steps. ‘Here’s a binder. Here’s all the information you need to know. Good luck.’ I cannot tell you even today where that binder went.”
One result of those VA advisory committees was the Office of Survivors Assistance, which she takes pride in having had a part in creating.
“I remember sitting next to Gen. Richard Cody, who I used to work for at the 101st Airborne,” she said. “He asked me why I didn’t come to him to help me through that process, and I [said], ‘Because you would have taken care of me, but the system needed [to be] changed.’ That takes a lot more steps, a lot more authorizations, a lot more paperwork. And I did not want another surviving spouse to go through the same things that I went through.”
Hazelgrove now serves as the national vice president of Gold Star Spouses of America, which was founded in 2024 to ensure that all surviving spouses, regardless of gender, receive the support they need. The organization structures its programs around what it has termed the CARE Model: connection, advocacy, remembrance, and education.
Gold Star Spouses of America is a membership-based organization that connects surviving spouses from across the country, giving them face to face time to learn from one another, as well as advocate through telling their stories to Congress and other government officials. They also educate bereaved spouses about their benefits and how those benefits change for them and their children through their survivor journey.
“We’ve all had that knock on the door, and we know what comes after that, and we know what happens when all that immediate support goes away and you are left alone,” she said. “But they’re not alone. When we move forward, it’s not the same thing as us moving on. We still have that loss. We still have that family member that’s never coming home. That grief timeline is not the same for everybody. So when they are ready, we are here. “
