When I was first asked to travel to Baghdad with the USO delegation, I said yes without a moment’s hesitation. Even so, I was flooded with self-doubt as the trip got closer. I would be traveling with celebrities like Kid Rock and John and Rebecca Stamos, and I wasn’t sure what role I would play. I wanted to bring a piece of rubble from the World Trade Center with me, but I wondered whether it was appropriate. Would I feel like the poster girl for “Grief on Display”?

I flew to Iraq on Father’s Day. It was poignant for me because I was on my way to visit soldiers who were about the same age my father was when he went to war. That was 1944, and my dad was 18 years old and headed for Belgium. He was soon fighting in one of the most savage conflicts of the war: the Battle of the Bulge.

Dad never talked about the war and it was half a century before I found out what happened to him there. It was his sister who told me that while my dad was crawling to help his buddy, he detonated a land mine that blew off his left leg. He took care of his friend as best he could and then fashioned a tourniquet for himself with materials at hand, including rubber from a fountain pen. Dad was one of the few who survived the fire fight but his leg had to be amputated.

I grew up knowing that Daddy was different. When we went horseback riding he put his good leg in the stirrup and threw his wooden leg over the other side of the horse. Dad loved to joke–I’d watch him shock unsuspecting onlookers by pushing a thumbtack through his pants or by laying the prosthesis in front of a car just in time for someone to roll over it.

The only time I ever heard him complain was when he took me trout fishing in the Ozarks. Water leaked into his waders and created an uncomfortable suction problem with his leg. He got mad, and then got on with it.

Eighteen years after he returned from battle, my father died from his war wounds. His injuries had put too much pressure on his heart. I was 12 years old when it happened, too young ever to have thought to ask him about his experiences. Even though we never spoke about it, he instilled in me a sense of pride in our country and our military that I still feel today. He taught me to honor my country by showing me it was worth dying for.

When I arrived in Baghdad it was 120 degrees. But standing before thousands of U.S. servicemen and -women, I felt a chill. I was awed by their sense of sacrifice and mission. And I understood exactly what my father had stood for.

Once the emcee introduced me as a widow of September 11, it was as if an emotional dam had burst wide open. I told the troops I was there to thank them, not to collect condolences. I explained that I believe they are on the front lines of World War III. I shared the stage with two others who had lost loved ones on that awful day: Ginny Bauer, a New Jersey mother of three, whose husband David was killed, and John Vigiano, who lost his two sons–John Jr. was a firefighter and Joe was with an elite unit of the New York City Police.

My own husband was 46 when he died. As the newly appointed head of the Port Authority, he had been on the job for only seven months when he left for work on that brilliant blue-sky morning. He had had a long and varied career in the private sector, but what he most cherished was public service. Neil wanted his life to stand for something.

I saw that same sense of duty in the hundreds of soldiers I met. Hearing so many of the men and women tell me they had enlisted because of September 11 brought me to tears. One mother of two from Montana said she joined the Army after the attacks. Others reached out to hug me, as if they needed to establish their own physical connection to our national tragedy. I was completely unprepared to see the World Trade Center memorabilia which some of the soldiers carried with them into the streets of Baghdad. When I passed around the piece of metal from the towers, they reached for it as if it were the Holy Grail.

I have returned from Iraq with an even deeper sense of gratitude than I had before I went. My husband and my father are gone. But the goodness that made them so luminous shines in thousands of others who serve our country. This trip was one of the few times since September 11 that I’ve been able to share not only my grief, but also my sense of hope.