Courtesy Photo | Sgt. 1st Class Patricia “Trish” Huckoby, a training instructor for the Petroleum...... read more read more
FORT LEE, Va. — Time carries us to tragedy like a child caught in floodwater and can leave many gasping under the emotional force.
Survivors can imagine that they are left alone in a cold sea of grief.
Still, if they can lift their heads, they can often see others wading there with them and still others offering a lifebuoy of support.
People care, and organizations are prepared to help.
Sgt. 1st Class Patricia “Trish” Huckoby is one such person who cares, and the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors is one such organization to help.
Huckoby volunteers to assist children and teenagers grieving the death of a military family member in addition to her work as a training instructor for the Petroleum and Water Department, U.S. Army Quartermaster School, at Fort Lee, Virginia.
She facilitates connection with others who have faced similar losses for the kids in TAPS and teaches ways they can honor their loved one.
There are times as a military mentor at the grief camps when she comes full circle in ways and is carried back to tragedies of her own.
Huckoby, a Norfolk, Virginia, native, lost her mother to a heart attack when she was eight, and her brother was murdered when she was 17.
“So, when I go to TAPS, I think about all that,” she said. “You don’t forget. You just figure out life and move on with all that in mind and try not to break down.”
She also lost her best friend, a fellow service member, to suicide in 2021.
“I honor him every time I attend a TAPS event,” Huckoby said. “This gives me the opportunity to shed light on how serious suicide is.”
“THE SONG IS ENDED, BUT THE MELODY LINGERS ON.”
— Irving Berlin
As she had been volunteering for TAPS before her best friend passed, the next grief camp presented both difficulty and an opportunity for healing.
“The program helped with the grief,” she said. “You come in thinking you’re okay, and you’re not, so that following year in my first year honoring him, it was rough as far as trying to help someone else through their grief, and you’re trying to hold back what you’ve got going on because you don’t want to affect the child’s process. Grief work helps everybody.”
Grief doesn’t have a timeline; it can come on unexpectedly, Huckoby said.
“Even to this day now, I’ll hear a certain song, and I’ll just burst out in tears,” she said. “Metaphorically for me, it’s like my friend’s around or he’s letting me know, ‘hey, it’s going to be alright.’”
The song—” Return of the Mack” by Mark Morrison—reminds her of when she and her best friend met in Korea and clicked. When she hears it, she recounts the friendship and times they had together, she said.
Those within the TAPS organization often refer to a moment like this as a "Godwink" or a moment when a person grieving the loss of a military loved one feels a profound and unexpected connection to that loved one, often understanding it as a spiritual sign or message.
“WHAT WE HAVE ONCE ENJOYED, WE CAN NEVER LOSE. ALL THAT WE LOVE DEEPLY BECOMES A PART OF US.”
— Helen Keller
Volunteer work for Huckoby came after joining the Army, though she was always helping people even as a kid, she said.
“I would wait for the last person in line, so they could come catch up, little things like that,” she said. “Even with my siblings, it would be me picking up slack or us doing it together. I was a very nice child, always helping, always in the kitchen when my grandma and everybody was cooking, asking, ‘Can I do something?’ They would make me do dishes, but at least I was helping.”
Huckoby was raised on values of equality and contribution to the team.
Her father is a retired chief petty officer, and her brother is a retired Army master sergeant.
“I learned a lot, and I feel like I have big shoes to fill,” she said. “My brother, for example, was one of the first cooks to be ranger and airborne qualified.”
It’s fitting that Huckoby chose to become a “water dog” (water treatment specialist), which is considered the unsung hero of sustainment.
Her success is measured not by accolades, but by the sustenance she provides for others toward mission completion.
“THE WISE LEADER IS LIKE WATER. WATER CLEANSES AND REFRESHES ALL CREATURES WITHOUT DISTINCTION AND WITHOUT JUDGMENT; WATER FREELY AND FEARLESSLY GOES DEEP BENEATH THE SURFACE OF THINGS; WATER IS FLUID AND RESPONSIVE.”
— John Heider
One leader who recognized Huckoby as an unheralded hero early in her military career is Retired Army Staff Sgt. Jarred Hufford, the Fiscal Year ‘25 TAPS mentor of the year and the one who recruited her into TAPS in 2015.
“She’s not a limelight type of person,” Hufford said. “She’s very personable, friendly and caring by nature.”
Female Soldiers went to Huckoby for guidance even back when she was lower enlisted, Hufford recounted.
“She’s a strong female influence,” he said. “She’s got that motherly instinct about her, keeping that firm but fair mentality, looking at what’s best for everyone. She does the right thing. She was there to help other Soldiers because she wanted to see them develop.”
Huckoby served as a company representative for the Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers program when she was at Fort Bragg and took on the responsibility of building a haunted house for Trunk or Treat, Hufford recalled.
“Just seeing her passion doing this, to make it as much fun for the kids and the families as possible,” he said. “She went all out with her costume and ideas for decorating. You could see the wheels in her head spinning, ‘What can we do to make this the best time ever?’”
The volunteer mentorship opportunity that TAPS presented, then, branched out naturally from Huckoby’s work in the BOSS program.
“What she’s done with the TAPS program is that she’s made the lives of these children better,” Hufford said. “The kids have always flocked to her because she has this big smile on her face, a ton of positive energy, that’s just flowing at times. That’s what a lot of these kids need.”
Huckoby has a nurturing spirit and allows the TAPS survivors to be kids, said Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Francis, a fellow TAPS military mentor and a career counselor for the Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Lee who has known Huckoby since 2019 while serving with her in Korea.
“Like a ball of sunshine, she has a certain aura about herself, that when she’s in a room with the kids, they all gravitate toward her,” Francis said. “They all lean heavily on her.”
Francis recounted how abundantly joyous kids were to see Huckoby on day one of their most recent TAPS events.
“That’s our meet and greet for all the kids, and at least 12 of the kids ran up to her and said, ‘Oh, Miss Trish, we’re glad to see you back,’” he said. “They started hugging her. Some of them cried. She cried herself.”
“GRIEF IS LIKE THE OCEAN; IT COMES ON WAVES EBBING AND FLOWING. SOMETIMES THE WATER IS CALM, AND SOMETIMES IT IS OVERWHELMING. ALL WE CAN DO IS LEARN TO SWIM.”
— Vicki Harrison
Similarly, Hufford recalled how Huckoby performed at her first TAPS event—a camp house event where parents dropped off their kids for four days and three nights.
“It was great seeing her out, even at the end of the night, when all the scheduled events were over, just playing with some of these girls who were maybe nine, 10-years old at the time, watching her having fun and being a big kid herself, being her authentic self there,” Hufford said.
The camp closed each night with a campfire, and it’s common for kids to shed tears, he said.
“I remember a girl having a breakdown, one of the nicest kids I’ve ever met,” Hufford said. “Without hesitation, I remember Trish walking over and just sitting right next to her and just being that person and providing that presence for this young girl to lean into and be that shoulder to cry on and wrap her up in her arms when she needed a hug.”
Hufford was impressed that Huckoby was able to respond so readily at her first event.
“There’s 50, 60, 70 kids, and that she could see it across the circle, and she knew the move instinctually,” he continued. “[The girl] was missing her dad, and Trish was there.”
Huckoby has a natural ability to show empathy and care toward other people, Hufford said.
“The biggest thing that sets apart a good mentor from a great mentor is the ability to be able to empathize with the kid and allow the kid to be exactly who they need to be, get exactly what they need and not force anything,” he added.
Huckoby is a wizard when it comes to TAPS magic, Hufford said. Nothing stops her from giving her 110% for the kids.
“You walk in and see her at any event, even if she’s with a brand-new group of kids, she’s got kids around her because she gives them that ability to talk, to share whatever is on their mind and help them, you know, continue to pay honor to their person,” he said.
“THE DEEPEST DEFINITION OF YOUTH IS LIFE AS YET UNTOUCHED BY TRAGEDY.”
-Alfred North Whitehead
As military mentors interact with TAPS children through activities like art projects, fun games and sports, they remain aware that the kids are simultaneously working through the effects of their tragedy.
“They are taking it one day at a time, trying to remain a kid as best as possible while still navigating the trauma and death they have had in their lives,” Francis said.
The kids are resilient and show an ability to reclaim their innocence, he said.
“A lot of the kids that I’ve talked with have said that it’s forced them to mature at different rates,” Hufford said. “It’s taken part of their childhood. It’s usually that 8 to 9-year-old range when it really starts to set in, and the innocence is lost.”
TAPS is a place where they are free to be themselves, and they are enabled to have that innocence again and to get what they need, he said.
Hufford shared that a graduating senior this year who he had worked with for a decade asked him for one last piggy-back ride.
“For boys who lost their fathers, for example, there’s that stigma of, ‘Well, you’re the man in the house now,’” Hufford said. “‘But, what about my childhood? What about playing catch with my dad? What about riding bikes?’ And they lose those things, and the mentors, we form relationships with the kids that we maintain outside of the events—and Trish is so much included in this—and we do things just to remind them that they are loved and give a little extra that doesn’t end on Sunday night when we’re saying goodbye at TAPS.”
“THE WATER IS YOUR FRIEND. YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT WITH WATER; JUST SHARE THE SAME SPIRIT AS THE WATER, AND IT WILL HELP YOU MOVE.”
– Aleksandr Popov
Huckoby keeps a mantra close to her heart from the movie “Finding Nemo” which is to “just keep swimming.”
“You can’t stop where you are,” she said. “You have to keep going.”
This is the message she shares regularly with the Soldiers she trains at Fort Lee and the children she mentors in TAPS: practice resilience and put one foot in front of the other, she said.
“We can’t just stay sorrowful or sad,” Huckoby said. “We must be hopeful because we have to keep going, and that’s what TAPS does, it instills hope for the future. We don’t have to forget, but we can still move along and keep honoring our friends or family that we lost.”
Due to Huckoby’s rewarding experience as a TAPS military mentor assisting Gold Star families in their grief, she is now working toward a career as a social worker after her Army retirement.
She is currently wrapping up a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Fayetteville State University, and upon graduation she has plans of moving on to Virginia Commonwealth University for their Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and Master of Social Work (MSW) programs.
She intends to transition into either becoming a military and family life counselor or going into social work to do case management.
She will continue teaching resilience and improving people’s lives. Through the Army and TAPS, she has found motivation and her life’s purpose.
“The main focus for me is making sure every child has opportunity, regardless of where they come from, to strive for their dreams, and that you can make it out from whatever situation you are in—that there is a positive in all the negative that is going on.”
Huckoby, then, acts as a helping hand offered to those swimming in that ocean of sorrow, who may not imagine how they could find a way to safety. She is someone who can assure them that she herself has survived and has moved forward. She shows the way to what is possible.
She offers hope.
| Date Taken: | 09.05.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.05.2025 10:22 |
| Story ID: | 547305 |
| Location: | FORT LEE, VIRGINIA, US |
| Hometown: | NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 32 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Training instructor teaches resilience, instills hope in Gold Star kids, by Chad Menegay, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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