The story in brief: The death of a young Marine Corps lieutenant in 1907 became a national sensation when his mother, his sister and his ghost challenged the Navy’s suicide verdict.
For the American press and its readers, the lieutenant’s mother, Rosa Sutton, came to represent every mother who had lost a son in the military and sought the facts about his fate. Rosa became a sympathetic figure to her fellow citizens of the Progressive Era who saw her as a grieving mother, and an ordinary citizen up against a powerful government. The Sutton case is an iconic American story; as far as we know it is the first of its kind.
But not the last–
LOOKING AHEAD: An excerpt from the Prologue of the first paperback and e-book of the book about Rosa’s story, A Soul on Trial: (Coming Spring 2026)
Freedom of the press and free speech is no longer a given in the United States, hopefully, just for the duration of one administration. In 2026, the first amendment and democracy are under threat on several fronts.… In October 2025, dozens of newspaper reporters from major news outlets left the Pentagon. These courageous men and women refused to sign an agreement that restricts freedom of the press put forth by the current Secretary of Defense. As was certainly true in 1907, the military is now more determined than ever to control its public image.
In 2006, as I completed the original manuscript of this book, America’s media had begun to follow three Army mothers who sought the truth about the fate of their sons, all of whom died during the War on Terror in the spring of 2004. Two years later, Peggy Buryj, Karen Meredith and Mary (“Dannie”) Tillman had not yet learned the full story about Jesse’s and Kenneth’s fate in Iraq and Pat’s in Afghanistan. They would have a hard road ahead. These mothers’ unrelenting quest for accurate information, and sometimes even their exact words, mirror Rose Sutton’s urgent search; their determination over the past two decades has helped me understand her devastation in a visceral way. None of these mothers initially wanted to go to the media or to appeal to Congress. But those were the two primary sources of support they had. In a similar way, support from Senator Jonathan Bourne and from newspapers across the nation fueled Rosa’s journey. The 21st-century media has been instrumental in helping other military mothers as well. The parallels between these mothers’ campaigns for the truth over time underscores how important a free press has been through throughout American history.
As Peggy Buryj told PBS in 2006, the journey to find out what really happened to Jesse “has just broken my heart worse.” In 2026, Peggy, Karen and Mary still come alive through print and broadcast news stories, videos, three books about the case of Pat Tillman, and masses of online information. We update their stories in the epilogue for the revised edition of A Soul on Trial. Rosa Sutton may well have been the first mother to confront the military in court about her son’s fate. But the courage of Peggy, Karen and Mary continues to inspire many to seek justice.
The cover for the May 2026 release of A Soul on Trial
“It is the mother, and the mother only, who is a better citizen even than the soldier who fights for his country.… The mother is the one supreme asset of the National life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman or businessman or artist or scientist.”
Theodore Roosevelt at the National Congress of Mothers First International Congress on the Welfare of the Child, March 1908.
