Student Success Stories – Kayla Martin

On November 6, 2015 I woke up in my dorm room to a call from my Mom sharing that my Dad had passed away. Immediately, this didn’t make sense. My Dad was in the Army – he was invincible. In addition to that, he was stateside, safe at home and thousands of miles away from a war zone that he hadn’t seen in 7 years. The days and weeks following were blurred as I navigated next steps with my family, ditched college, and tried to find a new normal.

My Dad, LTC Thomas M. Hawes was a born soldier. He was born in Union City, Tennessee to my Grandfather, later COL (R) Thomas J. Hawes. He was raised an Army brat and traveled all over the states and overseas with the forever dream of becoming a soldier himself. He attended Norwich University, like my Grandfather, and commissioned in the US Army in 1992. He was a Military Police Officer and adored his job. The Army took him everywhere – from Alabama, Missouri, Hawaii, Korea, and Michigan, which is where he met us.

My Dad was my Stepdad. He met my Mom when I was just 4 years old and my sister was 2. He fell in love with her and us and wanted to be our Dad as fast as possible. They quickly married and my little brother was soon on the way. He was just as dedicated as a Dad as he was a soldier, and took us to Maryland, Japan, New York, and finally, Texas.

While a loyal husband, one thing that my Mom & Dad couldn’t agree on was whether or not to get a family pet. My Mom refused but my Dad required it. They negotiated and we ended up with a Dachshund, Mia, that we adopted in Nagasaki Japan. Upon returning stateside, we added a Frenchie to our family who we named Knox, after my Dad and I were outvoted on the name Brady.

Knox & Mia were my Dad’s everything. He was a large man but was often found carrying them around like an accessory and he had the funniest high-pitched baby voice when speaking to them. They loved him just as much and you could always find them napping on his stomach while he watched the New England Patriots play on the TV. When Dad returned home from deployments, they were the first to greet him at the door with wags and kisses.

Knox & Mia continued to be two of the most important parts of our family after we lost Dad. They looked for him for awhile and would wag their tails while they smelled his belongings. It was hard to watch them navigate their new normal, and hard to think that they would never understand why he was gone. We unfortunately lost Knox in 2020 (11 years old) and Mia in 2021 (17 years old). It was gut wrenching losing what felt like the two last pieces we had of Dad.

Today, I have my two dogs of my own – Brady & Ollie. I adopted Brady the summer before my last year of college and named him in honor of my Dad’s favorite football player, a name he had been attempting to get my Mom to agree to for years.

Brady helped me navigate my life from young adulthood into adulthood and was there for me while I delt with many challenges in life, to include college.

College was one of the most stressful times of my life, and was especially hard to navigate without my Dad. Financially, it had the potential to be crippling and having a smaller support system made persevering harder.

Luckily, along with Brady, Children of Fallen Patriots stepped in to offer not only assistance with finances, but a helping hand and support network to help get me over the finish line. I graduated completely debt free from the University of Alabama and now work for Fallen Patriots in my Dad’s honor, to ensure other children who have lost a parent in the line of duty have the opportunity to graduate debt free and that their parent’s memory lives on forever.