The Boston Globe:  “Three lives linked by call to duty, common tragedy.  The sacrifices of Harvard Law graduates who took unconventional paths leave friends and classmates searching for answers about themselves.  They were three best friends at Harvard Law School who turned their backs on lucrative careers to follow an exceedingly rare path: Michael Weston, who jogged through Harvard Yard in combat boots and openly scorned corporate life, joined the Marines. Helge Boes and his girlfriend Cynthia Tidler, who shared their friend’s sense of duty and adventure, joined the CIA. . . . Boes, a covert CIA operative, died when a grenade went off during training in Afghanistan in 2003, leaving Tidler, whom he had married after school, a widow. In their grief, Weston and Tidler reconnected and married earlier last year. Three months later, Weston deployed to Afghanistan; he died there in October, in a helicopter crash, widowing Tidler once again.”

For more see the National Law Journal‘s story “He had the ability to do anything” quoting his wife of just five months.

Sadly once again this story reminds me of the letter President Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Lydia Bixby on November 21, 1864, when he learned that her five sons in the Union Army were killed in action in the Civil War.  President Lincoln wrote Mrs. Bixby the following letter in his own hand.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.  I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.  But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save.  I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln