A holiday gift that keeps on giving for military families

Eric Steffeney won’t be coming home for Christmas to open presents with his sons, Jordan and Blake, and his daughter, Alexis.

Steffeney, a staff sergeant and bomb technician from Lillington, N.C., was 28 when he died in February 2005, killed by a remotely detonated bomb six weeks before the end of his second tour of duty in Iraq. He won’t see his kids grow up, listen to their secrets, look over their homework.

His widow, Theresa, tries not to cry when she thinks of how much her kids will miss. Her distress upsets them. Especially 8-year-old Blake, who shakes his head and says, “Nuh-uh,” when her eyes tear up.

“His dad was like that, too,” she said, softly. “And he looks just like his dad.

“We had 11 1/2 years together. We talked about sitting in rocking chairs and waiting for guys to pick up our daughter to go out on dates.”

Nothing will bring him back or fill the hole in their lives, or the lives of so many other military families.

But for the Steffeneys and more than 500 spouses and children of military personnel killed on duty since Sept. 11, 2001, a four-day trip to Southern California this week arranged by the Snowball Express project became a surprisingly valuable gift.

Not because of the sunglasses the kids got from Oakley at the company’s Foothill Ranch headquarters, the gear they received from Quiksilver, the hugs Goofy gave them at Disneyland or the tickets and goodies the Ducks gave them Monday before the team’s 4-1 victory over the Calgary Flames at the Honda Center.

The unexpected gift has been finding each other and sharing ways to heal.

For Theresa Steffeney, the trip was a chance to meet other women who must bring up kids without a father, strengthening her determination to be strong for her kids and herself.

She hasn’t completely accepted her husband’s death. “I still don’t deal with it,” she said. “I think talking with other wives has helped me. I never realized there were that many.

“For me, this is a huge thing. I thought I was alone. I’m not.”

Veronica Fritz of El Dorado Hills, in Northern California, became a widow in 2002. Air Force Major Gregory Fritz, who was stationed at Hurlburt Field in Florida, was the navigator aboard an MC-130H Combat Talon cargo aircraft that crashed into a mountain about 15 miles south of San Juan, Puerto Rico, during a training flight. After his death, Veronica Fritz moved west with her children, Connor, now 10, and Lauren, 7, to be near her family.

Through a support group for military families, she had met about 25 of the women who took advantage of the Snowball Express offer, and she was glad to reconnect with them and for her kids to meet other kids who had lost a parent. Most of all, she was happy to leave the driving and arrangement-making to someone else after doing all the work involved in raising two lively children.

“Honestly, the kids and I have never taken a vacation together,” she said. “I’ve never really planned something like this.”

Seeing people lined up to welcome the families to the Oakley facility with flags and cheers especially touched her, she said.

“It was very heartwarming to see the support for the military,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you support the war or not. It just shows when you support the troops you’re supporting the families back home.”

The family enjoyed Disneyland, and Lauren got a T-shirt to prove she had survived the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. On the ride, which rises and plunges unpredictably, Connor got a lesson in physics from the Snowball Express ID tag he wore around his neck.

“The name tag, when you go down, it floats,” he said, still trying to figure it out.

Although the organizer of Snowball Express, Michael Kerr, has faced questions about his past and his ability to oversee the program’s finances, the families said they were treated royally during their stay, which ends today. For Tim Ryan, the Ducks’ chief operating officer, entertaining the families “made perfect sense.” He added, “For us to hear that we can be part of something that in a small way can begin the healing process means more than any other part.”

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