Audri Beugelsdijk had been married for less than 11 weeks when she received a visit from a casualty officer. Her husband has been lost at sea on the USS Kinkaid.
“It’s just the last thing that you could imagine happening and it just turned my world upside down,” Beugelsdijk says.
Beugelsdijk and her husband Jason Springer met in the Navy and the two “became very good friends and then it turned into something else, as often happens,” she says. “He loved what he did. He had a bounce in his step and was ready to change the world, and it was a shock to my core when he died.”
Only days after receiving the news of her husband’s death, Beugelsdijk, who was also serving in the Navy, learned about the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, an organization that provides support to the families of fallen service members.
“I picked up the…
