Karen Grimord’s birthday wish came true when she celebrated her special day on Aug. 10.

Grimord, president of the Landstuhl Hospital Care Project, laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery to “recognize and acknowledge the sacrifice of all our military personnel, past and present,” she said. “Some we know when, where and how they fell. Others are only known to God.”

LHCP is a non-profit organization that provides comfort and relief items for service members who become sick, injured, or wounded from service in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. Donated items are distributed to military patients at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest American military hospital outside the United States, to field hospitals in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to stateside VA facilities.

Brian Higgins, a Woodbridge soldier who received comfort items from LHCP after he was injured in Afghanistan, LHCP corporate sponsor Jeremy Linder and Diane Payton, a retired Air Force master sergeant who served as a contact for LHCP while stationed at a field hospital in Afghanistan, joined Grimord at the ceremony.

The quartet walked down the stairs leading to the tomb together. Along with members of the Army’s Old Guard, they laid the wreath, donated by Achara Flowers & Gifts in Stafford, in front of the marble tomb.

“I remember visiting Arlington over 25 years ago,” recalled Grimord. “As I walked through, I wondered what America would be like without the young men and women buried there who were willing to put their lives on the line and had died  for the life we have and wishing I could do more to pay my respects. Since then I have traveled all over the world with a military husband and spent a time in Bosnia myself and now run LHCP. I think I have found my way to pay back what has been given me I can only hope it is enough.”

Linder’s company, Block Scientific, Inc., recently donated a Clay Adams Dynac II centrifuge to LHCP, which shipped the piece of equipment to a hospital in Iraq. Centrifuges are used in hospital’s to separate the solid and liquid parts of blood

“I email contacts at all of our combat support hospitals, expeditionary medical support and battalion aid stations weekly,” Grimord noted. “Week after week, month after month and with out every meeting you create a bond. Sometimes they only have time to email their list of needs but other times I talk to them about their ups and downs and their loses. When it is time for them to come home I, am happy for them but I lose a part of my heart.  It travels with them as they go home, wherever that may be. I let each of them know that our home is open to them if they travel to this area.”

Grimord recalled emails that she received from Payton with fondness.
“Diane would make me laugh at her emails because she would start off with ‘I have a strange request or I don't know if you can do this, but,’” she said. “[Payton] was always a little skeptical of the items we could send until the end of her tour and then I think she caught on you ask and we will do everything that was legal to try to get it there.”

For more information on LHCP, visit its Web site at landstuhlhospitalcareproject.org.

Everyone shares love and respect in the family, even the grandchildren.