A Legacy Born
From Service
The history of Children of Fallen Heroes begins decades before the organization existed.
It begins with people who served, with a morning in March 1973, and with families whose lives were permanently reordered by a loss the rest of the country moved past within a week.
What was carried forward from that loss eventually became an organization. This is that history.
March 8, 1973 — Silk Hope, North Carolina
On the morning of March 8, 1973, a U.S. Army C-47 departed Simmons Army Airfield at Fort Bragg. On board were fourteen members of the U.S. Army Parachute Team — the Golden Knights.
The aircraft crashed in a farm field in Silk Hope, North Carolina.
All fourteen men aboard were killed.
They were soldiers who had volunteered more than once — for the Army, for airborne service, and for a team that accepted very few. Among them were a command pilot, a co-pilot, a crew chief, a Gold Team Leader and his assistant. Some were in their twenties. The oldest was thirty-nine. Most had families waiting for them at Fort Bragg.
- PFC Paul D. Albritton
- SSG Joseph C. Barbarick
- SGT Michael G. Buckley
- SSG Bartley L. BullingtonCrew Chief
- SSG Cecil E. Davis
- CW3 Richard A. Del ConteCommand Pilot
- SSG Raymond C. Kinser, Jr.
- SGT Edward M. Parrish
- CW2 Rodney H. PeaseCo-Pilot
- SSG Joseph B. PelterAssistant Gold Team Leader
- SSG James F. Rice
- SGT Michael D. Wasley
- SFC Francis P. WelchGold Team Leader
- SSG Robert T. Wolfe
The Families Left Behind
Fourteen families learned what had happened that same day.
What follows a loss like that is not an event. It is a long arithmetic that never quite resolves. A spouse becomes two parents overnight. A child grows up assembling a father out of other people’s memories. Graduations, weddings, ordinary Tuesdays — all of them arrive with someone missing.
The country’s attention moves on quickly. The families do not have that option.
This is not unique to Silk Hope. It is the shared experience of every family whose life reorganizes itself around service-related loss — in combat, in training, on a call, or on an ordinary shift that ends differently than it began. Military families know it. First-responder families know it. It is a particular kind of quiet that people outside those communities rarely see.
Understanding that experience — not reading about it, but living inside it — is where Children of Fallen Heroes begins.
From Legacy to Purpose
The impact of March 8, 1973, did not end at Silk Hope. Its lessons about service, sacrifice and the families left behind would later help shape the purpose behind Children of Fallen Heroes.
Service-related loss has a lasting impact. Public attention may move on, but children, families and caregivers continue forward through milestones, transitions and challenges that can extend for years. Meaningful support requires more than recognition in the immediate aftermath — it requires continued presence, opportunity and connection.
That understanding helped shape a principle that remains central to CFH today: the legacy of those who served can continue through the opportunities created for those who come next.
Decades later, those lessons helped inspire Children of Fallen Heroes.
Children of Fallen Heroes
Children of Fallen Heroes was founded in 2015 to serve the children and families of fallen military members, Special Operators and first responders.
The premise was straightforward. These families have already given more than most Americans will ever be asked for. What their children need is not charity — it is access. Opportunity. Experiences and instruction that open doors, delivered consistently, over years, by people who understand what those children are carrying.
As the work grew, so did the number of young people it reached. CFH expanded to serve foster youth, caregivers and students in Title One schools — young people whose circumstances differ but whose need for the same doors does not.
What united them was never how they came to CFH. It was what CFH could put in front of them once they arrived.
Eleven Years of Service
Over eleven years, Children of Fallen Heroes has reached more than 15,000 youth and families across the country through STEAM education, aviation programming, leadership development and national partnerships.
The work was built the difficult way — event by event, city by city, partner by partner, wherever the families were. There was no campus, no permanent facility, no single place to build on. Programs were assembled, delivered and taken down. Relationships with schools, partners and communities began again in each new location.
Eleven years of working that way proved what the programming could do. It also made its ceiling obvious.
America’s Campus for the Next Generation
In its second decade, Children of Fallen Heroes secured 82 acres in Vass, North Carolina as the permanent home of America’s Campus for the Next Generation.
It is the next chapter of the same history: taking what eleven years established and giving it somewhere permanent to stand. Education, innovation, leadership, service and opportunity — in one place, year-round, for the young people this organization was created to serve and the many more it has come to reach.
The land is secured. Site preparation is underway. The campus is being developed.