To our Gold Star Mothers, Gold Star Families, surviving families, veterans, and everyone who carries the memory of a loved one who served our nation:
I want to speak from the heart about something that is deeply important to our organization and to me personally.
The Purple Heart Project of Texas remains fully committed to preserving the meaning, history, and solemn significance of Gold Star Mothers and Families Day. The Gold Star Monument we were honored to unveil in the Purple Heart City of Boerne stands as a permanent tribute to our fallen service members and to the mothers, fathers, spouses, children, siblings, and families who carry their sacrifice with them every day.
We will protect and respect what that monument represents.
At the same time, our respect for the Gold Star community will never require us to diminish the loss of another military family.
There are definitions, designations, laws, and traditions that distinguish different circumstances of military death and service. We understand and respect the importance of those distinctions. But when we stand before a grieving mother, father, spouse, child, brother, or sister, our first response will always be compassion.
We will not measure one family’s grief against another’s.
We will not tell one family that their loved one’s life mattered more—or less—because of where, when, or under what circumstances that life ended.
Every man and woman who raised their hand, put on the uniform, and wore the stars and stripes became part of something greater than themselves. Their service mattered. Their life mattered. Their family matters.
Our mission has never been about choosing sides. It has never been about creating divisions between Gold Star Families, surviving families, Purple Heart recipients, veterans, or anyone else who has carried the weight and sacrifice of military service.
Our mission is to bring people together.
We can preserve the sacred meaning of the Gold Star while still extending our hands and hearts to every family that has experienced the loss of someone who served.
Those two things do not have to compete with one another.
We believe there should always be room at the table for compassion, understanding, remembrance, and respect. We believe our military community is strongest when families support one another rather than allowing terminology or circumstances to become walls between us.
The Gold Star Monument will continue to stand for what it was created to represent: the sacrifice of our fallen and the families who carry their legacy forward. We will honor that meaning with dignity and reverence.
And beyond that monument, our organization will continue to honor our Purple Heart recipients, our veterans, our surviving families, and every American service member whose life and service deserve to be remembered.
A human life is a human life. A family’s grief is real. Service is service. Sacrifice is sacrifice.
We do not have to diminish one person to honor another.
That is where we stand.
Not on one side or another—but beside the families.
With respect. With compassion. With gratitude. And with the commitment that as long as we are here, their names, their service, their sacrifices, and their stories will never be forgotten.
Chef Mark Sierra
Founder & President
The Purple Heart Project of Texas
Purple Heart City of Boerne, Texas