Never forget Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

August 18, 2026 would have been the 50^th birthday of U.S. Army pilot Captain Kimberly Hampton, who died at the age of 27 on January 2, 2004, when her OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter was shot down in Iraq.

She was the first female military pilot to be shot down and killed by enemy fire, but her mother, Ann, said, in an interview with this writer in January of 2004, that Kimberly preferred to be considered a soldier and a pilot who happened to be female. “She felt that, given the opportunities, within reason, she could do anything anyone else could do.” When she was in third grade, Kimberly had written for a school assignment that she wanted “to fly like a bird.” Her father, Dale, told this writer in January of 2004, “Be free and independent were the qualities she was referring to, and that was what she ended up doing.”

Pictured below are photographs made on her birthday at the Captain Kimberly Hampton Memorial Park, which was dedicated in early March of 2020 at the Captain Kimberly Hampton Memorial Library in Kimberly’s hometown of Easley.

Also pictured below are photographs made on her birthday at her gravesite with 50 yellow roses. “Kimberly loved live flowers,” her mother, Ann, has said.

Kimberly was a 1994 graduate of Easley High School.  On January 2 of this year, the 22^nd anniversary of Kimberly’s passing, Ann told this writer, “She’s Easley’s girl. She loved Easley, loved home.” When Arlington National Cemetery was offered as a burial site, Ann recalled that they said, “No, we’ve got to bring her home. She wanted to come home.”

Never forget the sacrifices made by American heroes and their families – the sacrifice made at the time of their passing and the continued sacrifices through the years, the sacrifices of what might have been.

And remember that freedom is not free.