"Don’t you get it? This is my child and he’s been in harm’s way for 8 months. Don’t you get it?"

"Both of our sons were in the Navy because their dad and their grandad had been in the Navy."

"I had women of all faiths praying for my son so to me, what has carried me through these years as a mom has been my faith in God and the power of prayer."

"We had him on Skype and as soon as he saw our faces, he just broke...and I thought my goodness, this is such a huge impactful thing on his life."

"When I turned on the television, and they reported that a marine 1st Lt. had been killed, I got on my knees and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed."

"They have fought for me..Why does this country have a problem with that?"

"This man who looked very nondescript..came up to my son and thanked him for his service..and handed him a one hundred dollar bill. This made a huge impact."

"I'm a senior citizen and have lived through six wars with someone I Loved in every one of them. It's been kind of rough. Thank goodness they all came back safe. What did we accomplish in these wars? Nobody wins."

"I have a lot of stories, a lot of stories that I know and people I knew and people I helped."

"It made me think about things I hadn't thought about in a long time and it made me focus on my son."

"I remember...a guy came up to me that was a marine and I said I'm not going to talk to him. I was that young and dumb."

"As a Latin mother, it's hard for me. I'm like a mother hen, it's hard for me to let them fly."

"I hate to say it, but I used to fantasize, just to know if I could take the pain of her being brought back in a coffin with the flag over it... I wanted to know if i could stand it, and I couldn't stand it, I couldn't imagine my live without her."

"They're going to come home in droves. We need to be ready We need to take care of them."

"You're always wondering what's happening, where are they because they're not allowed to say. You get a small pamphlet every month saying that [your sons] are in deployment... but in reality you don't know what's going on."

"At the time that he told me about being deployed, it did not register that deploy means deploy... I thought it was something that he had to do in Alaska... but no."

"He said, 'mom, I'm calling you to let you know that I'm conscious, that I can move, and that I'm OK' and I said, 'OK, I'll be there in two days!."

"When they came to get him,...he had a bag and they said 'leave the bag, your ours now, you don't need to take anything. We'll give you everything you need'."

"When our sons and daughters go into the military we need to support them to be grown-ups."

"You really don't know until they're placed in a situation…because I would have never imagined him to be so strong and determined."

"...ten years ago if you were in pain, a doctor kept writing prescriptions for you...never imagining that you were going to get addicted to it."