Lighting candles and igniting a crusade

by Fran Wood
Star Ledger | Opinion
Wednesday, August 17, 2005

When Kate Sobolewski lights her candle in front of the gazebo on Hackettstown's Main Street tonight, her personal connection to the war in Iraq will be on her mind.

"My only sister's only son is departing for Iraq in a week," she explains. "He's already served in Afghanistan and has just been promoted to major in the Marine Corps. He's an excellent leader and devoted to the people he serves with. But he has a wife and baby, and I hate to see him put in harm's way. And I would hate to see my sister end up a Gold Star mother like Cindy Sheehan."

The vigil Sobolewski hosts this evening is one of approximately 20 in New Jersey and, so far, 1,116 around the nation -- and their unlikely catalyst is Sheehan, who has turned her personal loss into an almost quixotic crusade against a war she bluntly says is killing people for nothing.

Sheehan, whose son Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in Iraq in April 2004, has been camping outside President Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch and vows to stay there until the president meets with her or returns to Washington. The nationwide vigil, she says, is "to remind people of the terrible price of war."

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