Author: Uriah Kiser

DUMFRIES, Va. — When Angela Armstrong was standing in a checkout line at a Walmart store in Dumfries she never expected this.

After a long day at her government job in Arlington, following a trip to church, and after shopping with her husband and three cranky children for last-minute Christmas gifts, the Triangle wife, mother of five, and new grandmother, was picked to receive a free holiday turkey.

Very few young people in their early 20s must go through the pain of losing their mother and father.

But that’s what Mary C. Rosenthal did when she was just 22 years old, a week before her first wedding anniversary — she buried her mother after a long bout with Metastatic lung cancer. A year later, she buried her father. Both smokers and died of cancer.