Tucson Gold Star Mother honored, decades later, for son's sacrifice

Jeane Stevens-Allen has always known about Gold Star mothers.

She just never realized she was one.

Almost 50 years after the death of her son, John Bradford Stevens, in the Vietnam War, the 88-year-old’s family will honor both mother and son with a potluck on Sunday, Gold Star Mother’s Day.

At least, that’s what she thinks is happening.

She knows more is going on than this meeting of the meals, but no one will tell her what. Niece and lead party planner Jeanene Kaiser has ordered the rest of the clan to stay tight-lipped about the evening’s programming, which includes songs, poetry, a flag ceremony by a high school JROTC color guard and a presentation of a Gold Star lapel pin.

Stevens-Allen won’t be allowed to see the newspaper Sunday morning.

“It dawned on me for the first time that she was a Gold Star mother and also that we had never really recognized her for that,” says Kaiser, 59. “She has gone her whole life carrying this in her heart, not demanding or expecting any kind of special attention.”

The revelation came to Kaiser following Donald Trump’s clash with the parents of a deceased Muslim-American soldier this summer. With attention honed in on Gold Star moms and families, Kaiser wondered what the designation actually meant.

Through her research, she learned about a group of mothers bonded together in the 1920s by mutual loss. Each had lost a child to military service, not necessarily through combat. They named their support group the American Gold Star Mothers Inc., after the gold stars that families have been attaching to Service Flags since World War I. Gold Star Mother’s Day has been recognized on the last Sunday in September since 1936.

Stevens-Allen remembers windows draped in flags during World War II. Flags with blue stars represented the living service members in a family. Gold stars honored the deceased.

She didn’t make the connection until Kaiser brought it up, and now she wants everyone else to know, too.

“It’s amazing how many people do not know what a Gold Star mother is,” she says. “I have been very adamant about it with everybody I talk to.”

She has become an advocate not for her own sake, but for other mothers in Tucson whom she knows must share her pain.

“They need to know that they gave up the best, and they need to be treated the best,” she says.

Born in 1946 in California, John Stevens was the kind of kid people liked. His school yearbooks are full of praise from his peers.

Cousin Charles White, 69, spent many afternoons in elementary school with Stevens. For the event Sunday, he will travel from his home in Las Vegas to share about his cousin.

Stevens enlisted in the Air Force in 1966, a year after graduating from high school, and was assigned to a photography unit. He worked at the Pentagon for nine months, where he met his wife. They married in January 1968.

“The last time I saw my cousin, I was 9 years old,” Kaiser says. “I was at his wedding. When he got married, all in his uniform, I thought, ‘My cousin is so good-looking.’ And none of us realized that was the last time we would ever see him.’”

He was killed in October 1968 in Vietnam, reportedly shot down by enemy fire. He was supposed to be headed home.

Had he lived, he would have turned 70 this Oct. 18. Instead, he died before turning 22. The potluck is also a birthday celebration.

To cope, his mother poured herself into her work at a California bank, never speaking much of her losses. She also lost a daughter, who died at the age of 2.

Stevens-Allen endured the grief by taking her son’s advice.

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“He used to say, when anything went wrong, ‘Just suck it up, Mom, and move on,’” she recalls. “And that’s what I’ve done. I’ve sucked it up and moved on.”

And yet she knows she’ll need a few boxes of tissues on Sunday evening. When people ask her why she so rarely mentions her son’s death, she responds in tears and in faith.

“God has a plan for everything, and he knew that my son was not going to be here long, so he sent me the very best, and it was his to take back,” she says. “You learn to just put him in your heart and go on.”

Following the death, Stevens-Allen received an envelope in the mail containing her son’s medals, including the Purple Heart and other accolades for his service and achievement in Vietnam. Somehow, over the years, they got misplaced.

“It brings me to tears because she never complains, and she is such a loving and giving person that you don’t hear her whine,” says Joyce Funk, a longtime Tucson friend of Stevens-Allen’s. “She never gripes or complains about the fact that she lost him.”

The family wants to give her the honor she never received to assure her that John Stevens has not been forgotten.

“None of the family has ever talked about this to her,” says Bettye Obenauf, Stevens-Allen’s 89-year-old sister and Kaiser’s mother. “What my elder daughter wanted to do was have the family realize the pain she has gone through of not sharing it with anyone.

“We all want to show her how much we love her. ... My children have all adopted her as their second mother.”

Stevens-Allen moved to Tucson in 2000 to live closer to Obenauf. Her first husband died in 2001.

She thought she would never marry again, but eight years later she met Louis Allen. She laughs and says she is thankful that her sister had six children.

“I’m blessed, really, and I think you have to sometimes lose something precious to find what you really have in life,” she says. “I love these kids. I love every one of them.”

Five of her sister’s six children plan to be at the potluck, along with their mother, Stevens-Allen’s older brother, his son and others. Kaiser says they’re expecting around 50 people.

Telling the Gold Star story to great-nieces and great-nephews is part of the potluck’s purpose. Stevens-Allen fears that this generation might not even know about her son.

“It’s to make sure that the next generation, my generation, knows his story and this part of our heritage,” says Corinne Blake, a 31-year-old great-niece in Tucson.

This is the kind of support that ultimately provides healing and peace, says retired Lt. Col. Richard Montgomery, a career soldier and Vietnam veteran who will present Stevens-Allen with the Gold Star pin.

“I think it’s going to give a final closure to my aunt,” says White, who served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. “I mean, it’s always been tough. It was a thing that until some time ago, we didn’t talk about.”

Stevens-Allen has donated pillowcases and lap robes in honor of her son to the VA hospital, where she connected with a volunteer who served in Vietnam at the same time as her son.

Even with so many military service members in the family, many knew nothing about Gold Stars. Kaiser and her own husband have served in the Coast Guard and Navy, respectively.

Among others, Stevens-Allen perceives an apathy for the sacrifices military families make. That can hurt more than the actual loss of her son.

No mom should feel that way.

“Little hugs, they’re the greatest things on earth,” she says. “I think every Gold Star mother in Tucson should get a special, loving hug on Sunday the 25th.”