DR. JOSH McCONKEY

Gary Beckstrom’s Thanksgiving Day message to the nation carried a world of hurt in 18 poignant words.

“I’m holding her hand right now,” he told the New York Times on Thursday. “She has a mortal wound. It’s not going to be a recovery.”

He was speaking from the Washington, D.C., hospital room of his daughter, Sarah Beckstrom, who died later that day.

The 20-year-old Summersville native, who enlisted in the National Guard right after her graduation from Webster Springs High School in 2023, was gunned down in the nation’s capital the day before while serving with her military unit.

She had just arrived in Washington, in fact, along with Andrew Wolfe, a staff sergeant from Martinsburg who took the same path as Beckstrom.

He joined up after walking across the stage for this diploma with the Class of 2019 from Musselman High School.

Wolfe was also hit by multiple rounds from a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver allegedy fired by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national and military man who had worked with CIA-trained forces in his home country.

Meanwhile, the citizen-soldier from the Eastern Panhandle remained in critical condition Friday.

Which leaves one family still keeping vigil — and another family now planning a funeral.

Dr. Josh McConkey doesn’t want people to forget that.

Even, he said, with feverish barbs being lobbed from both sides of sociopolitical chasm like bullets and mortar rounds in a skirmish.

The world of bombs and bullets is one he well knows, he said.

McConkey, a Nebraska native who is now working with Guard units across West Virginia and the region, is an emergency room physician and trauma doctor by training who has staffed field hospitals in war zones across Iraq, tending to victims of snipers and roadside bombs.

He’s newly appointed to his role as an emergency preparedness liaison officer, which means he helps oversee guard and reserve units responding to a multitude of circumstances.

The physician who hails from a rural town in Nebraska rose to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. “It’s really similar to West Virginia,” he said of his home environs.

Young people taking the oath, he said, do so for reasons as pragmatic as they are patriotic.

It might mean money for college, he said. It might mean bringing home extra money to help their parents with expenses.

“Everything is bigger than you when you put on that uniform,” he said.

“Andrew and Sarah volunteered for Washington,” McConkey continued. “They were brave to be there.”

Plus, he said, they offered to stay, so other married guardsmen with families could go home for Thanksgiving dinner and the holiday.