Tunnel To Towers Comes To The Rescue For Gold Star Widow

The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation played host to an inspirational evening at Casa Belvedere, the Italian Cultural Center, on Grymes Hill, where nearly 100 borough residents bore witness to Mecca Nelson’s heart-rendering story.

Nelson, a West Brighton resident and a Gold Star widow, shared her thoughts about her challenging life and her association with the Siller Foundation.

A Gold Star Family is the immediate family of a fallen service member who lost his or her life while serving during a time of conflict.

The Gold Star Family Home Program, launched in September 2018, honors the legacy of those who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country. The Foundation provides a mortgage-free home to surviving spouses with young children and builds specially-adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders.

MECCA’S STORY

Mecca’s husband, Mario, a native of Haiti, was brought to the United States as a child. As he grew into adulthood, he aways knew he wanted to join the military and serve America.

The couple met in Brooklyn when they were teens and they stayed close for years before actually dating and marrying.

In 2001, Mario signed on to the National Guard and after the 9/11 attacks, he volunteered to join the recovery effort at Ground Zero.

The couple welcomed their daughter, Mia, into the world in 2003 and shortly thereafter, Mario enlisted in the U.S. Army full-time. The family would travel to Germany before he deployed to Iraq in January 2006.

He had been away for 10 months, and was due back in another two, when he was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade detonated near his vehicle as he was leading a convoy of Iraqi soldiers and U.S. Marines through a perilous stretch of road.

He was just 26.

Since that time life was a struggle for Mecca, a martial arts and Yoga instructor, and her daughter, Mia.

“Some 15 years later I would learn how my husband ended up dying and why,” said Mecca. “It was devastating for me and it took a toll on myself and my daughter. And at 3 years old, my daughter said, ‘Mommy, it’s going to be OK.’”

Mecca explained the way in which she tried to do her best to refocus on her life, but needless to say it was challenging.

She was living in Germany at the time and going to college. And though it was a difficult time, she still managed to get good grades.

She opened a day care center that became accredited nation wide for the children of military families and single soldiers.

“I tried to make things better. But it took me some time to process the pain,” she recounted.

In time Mecca returned to New York and worked her hardest to resume life as it used to be.

But the harrowing times she and her daughter were forced to endure, which at one point in Mecca’s life included bouncing from one bad Brooklyn apartment to another after she returned from Germany, improved in 2019 when they received a mortgage-free Graniteville townhome from The Tunnel to Towers Foundation’s Gold Star Family Home Program.

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