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For her nearly 15 years in the Navy, Marsha Ratchford traveled wherever her orders sent her. There was Hawaii and Guam and Japan and Seattle and California. Washington D.C.--the Pentagon--was to be her family's last stop.

"She was retiring after this," said her husband, Rodney Ratchford, Friday night.

Asked to describe his wife, Rodney Ratchford didn't even pause: "The main thing about her," he said, "is that she was just the most loving mother."

The Ratchfords, who have been married 13 years, have three children: a son who is 11, a daughter who is 8, and another daughter who is barely 18 months.

Profile courtesy of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.