After CNN report, White House bringing back program for Gold Star families to honor service members buried abroad

The White House is pushing to reestablish a program for Gold Star families to honor their loved ones buried in American military cemeteries overseas after the shuttered program was featured in a CNN report, a White House official exclusively tells CNN.

The White House is pushing to reestablish a program for Gold Star families to honor their loved ones buried in American military cemeteries overseas after the shuttered program was featured in a CNN report, a White House official exclusively tells CNN. Biden administration officials have worked with the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) to restore the program, which allows Gold Star families to have flowers placed on their loved one’s grave at US military cemeteries abroad. “The White House worked with the ABMC and this program will now be re-established,” the official said. It is expected to be included in the coming budget year. For years, Gold Star families who lost loved ones in battle could pay for flowers and have the ABMC deliver them to the grave of their fallen family members in, say, Normandy. That program ended in 2015. On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” reported on the loss of the program. Rondy Elliott, a Gold Star daughter, lost her father, Corporal Frank Elliott, during the Normandy invasion 80 years ago.