Dr. Kevin Wallace
Van of Valor
NEW ORLEANS – This Thanksgiving, our table is a rental, and the view from our window is of a busy, unfamiliar street.
The chairs are hotel perfect.
This year, Lauren and I are spending this holiday far from the bustling gatherings of families or friends.
The silence in this apartment is a stark contrast to the constant hum of the Van of Valor’s engine that has been the soundtrack to our last nine months.
Since the start of the mission on March 13, we’ve driven 26,360 miles and have not taken a full day off in 256 days. We have another 746 charted miles and 24 days remaining until we end this portion of the mission.
But, we certainly will not rest then as we have hundreds of stories to write off information we’ve gathered. Not to mention, we have merely a few months to write, publish and promote the first book by America’s 250th birthday.
We then need to head up to Cambridge, Mass., for some of Lauren’s Harvard classes. We will keep working hard for you guys the entire time, and we promise you that!
After that, maybe, we’ll take a short scuba dive trip or a cruise for ourselves.
For Thanksgiving, we’ve traded campgrounds and parking lots for a temporary landing pad — a furnished apartment that holds none of our personal history, but all of our current purpose.
We miss our families with a deep, resonant ache, as they gather in Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, California, Florida, Idaho and elsewhere.
The phantom smells of a traditional feast seem to haunt these sterile rooms. We’d give anything for one of those chaotic, laughter-filled hugs from a niece or nephew, or to sit at a crowded table with our families.
But as we sit here, just the two of us, we are reminded of why we are here, in this specific city, in this temporary space.
Our mission demanded it.
The Van of Valor, our rolling memorial and studio, is parked outside, its precious cargo of 400 names silent under the holiday sky. Those names are our unseen guests today.
And in this quiet, we find a profound and different kind of gratitude.
Our gratitude is for the families who have welcomed us into their homes, sharing stories of their fallen heroes with a trust that has forever changed us. It is for the resilience of my wife, Lauren, who has balanced the intense emotional labor of this mission with the demands of a Harvard education, all from a succession of the passenger seat. Her strength is the anchor in our nomadic life.
This rental apartment isn’t a place of isolation; it’s a sanctuary for our mission. It’s a quiet space to process, to reflect, and to be grateful for the privilege of doing this work. We are here because ensuring these 400 heroes are remembered is more important than our personal comfort.
So, while we are not with our blood relatives this Thanksgiving, we feel the weight and the honor of our chosen family — the family of the fallen. We are giving thanks for them. And in serving their legacies, we have found a purpose that fills any empty space at the table.
There is nowhere else we are meant to be.
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