This Memorial Day, as millions of households honor veterans with an American flag on their front porch, several thousand homes around Arizona displayed the Gold Star flag.
Annette Hill keeps her flag with one gold star hanging on her porch year round. It represents her only child Adam Hill Gibson who served two tours driving for a striker brigade in Iraq.
"Adam saw the worst of the worse that humanity has to offer," she said. "Where the enemy does horrible things to the citizens whom we are there to protect."
She was an experienced PTSD counselor, trying to help her son rise above his own despair when he took his life in 2009.
This Memorial Day, she wishes people could hear Adam's response when she once complained about the nation's growing divisiveness.
"Mom, that divided nature is what I fought for," she said, recounting her son's words. "It is uncomfortable, but that's what makes us great — that we have the ability to voice our differences."
Hill says seeing her son's American flag waving among thousands of others at the national cemetery in north Phoenix each year puts that sacrifice in perspective.
