Watch: Widow of Sgt. 1st Class Eric Emond reflects on his legacy helping Gold Star families in Massachusetts
“Every choice he made was for other people. It was for the betterment of others, whether it be his family or his country.”
The widow of a Massachusetts native and member of the Army’s Special Forces says she wants people to know her husband “couldn’t have been a better man” or a more incredible person. Allie Emond spoke with “CBS Evening News” anchor Jeff Glor about the legacy of her 39-year-old husband, Sgt. 1st Class Eric Emond, who was killed in November by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on his seventh deployment.“Every choice he made was for other people,” she said. “It was for the betterment of others, whether it be his family or his country.”Emond and the couple’s three young children, ages 7, 4, and 1, are now being supported by Massachusetts Fallen Heroes, a group dedicated to helping veterans and Gold Star families that the Boston native helped start after he was injured in Afghanistan in 2009. He also helped create what would become the nation’s first memorial to those who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the city’s Seaport. “Eric was not just another Special Forces soldier, Eric was a WARRIOR,” the organization wrote of the father of three on its website. “He dedicated his life to serve the greater good. He made an impact on everyone he came into contact with and always put others before himself.”
We love you, Eric
You will never be forgotten
God bless America
Semper Fidelis
De Oppresso Liber@dan_magoon pic.twitter.com/0mjSyELt2H— Mass Fallen Heroes (@MAFallenHeroes) January 11, 2019
Allie Emond told CBS she trusts that the organization her husband helped found to help others will now take care of her family.
She said she and her husband always told their daughters, “Daddy’s a good guy, and good guys always win.”
“We just lived in this blissfully ignorant bubble of, ‘Daddy’s going to be fine, and Daddy’s going to come home.’ That’s how we lived our life,” she said. “Whether he was home, whether he was deployed. Everything was centered around him.”
The family went into his deployment thinking it would be his last because he was planning to retire after coming home, Emond told CBS.
“I don’t know why, but you think about the moment that people show up at your door, and you think about it briefly and think about how horrible it is,” she said. “So then you stop your brain from thinking about it because it’s so horrible and you never think it’s going to happen. And it happened.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IH1oitA-bY
