On clear nights, Jenna Grassbaugh likes to walk her dog and search for her husband.
“I always look up at the sky, and I try to find the brightest star,” she said. “I always think that’s like him.”
Capt. Jonathan D. Grassbaugh was the love of her life, a man she met at age 18 and married at 21. The couple had many plans.
When he deployed to Iraq just seven weeks after their wedding, his letters home spoke of what awaited when he returned: buying a house and starting a family.
But there’s a saying in the military: The best-laid plans rarely survive first contact.
On April 7, 2007, an insurgent detonated a 500-pound explosive buried in the road beneath the truck in which Jon Grassbaugh was riding in Zaganiyah, Iraq. He and three other soldiers were killed. Widowed at 22, Jenna Grassbaugh struggled through her grief, trying to find a balance between holding on and moving on.
Nearly six years later, she thinks she has found a fitting way to move forward: The second-year law student at Ohio State University has donated $250,000 (half of her husband’s life-insurance benefit) to the Moritz College of Law to fund an effort to help veterans.
