One of the things I love about this country is how so many citizens feel not only entitled but also obligated to weigh in on the issues of the day.

These are Americans who, at their core, feel a personal responsibility to participate in this wild adventure we call a democracy.

As a columnist, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of their unsolicited wisdom over the years. Often a note or a phone message forces me to stop all of my busyness and pick up the phone.

Last Wednesday, a stream of messages about stupid Super Bowl ads was interrupted by the soft but determined voice of Steve Sass.

"It's not right," Sass said. "I heard on the radio that the president doesn't send letters of condolence to the families of soldiers who commit suicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're all casualties of war. The president needs to send letters to their families, too."

Sass was washing dinner dishes in his kitchen, when he heard the story on public radio about the unwritten White House practice that began during the Clinton administration. Routinely, the president signs condolence letters to families of those who die in combat or in noncombat incidents in war zones. But when a man or woman in the service commits suicide, the White House is silent.

The stigma of suicide is great, and survivors' anguish is compounded when a loved one's death is regarded as something less than a devastating loss. The only shame in these suicides, which are increasing in every branch of the military, is the way we respond to them. A growing number of Americans, including many mental health experts, are imploring the president to put pen to paper and let survivors of wartime suicides know their loved ones mattered to their country.

Bonnie Carroll — who founded the veterans advocacy group Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors after her husband, U.S. Army Gen. Tom Carroll, was killed in a 1992 military plane crash — wrote President Barack Obama last month urging him to change policy. "Every military family pays a price when a loved one serves in the military," she wrote. "Their loved ones stand ready to go into harm's way to protect our country. Their deaths are painful to their surviving family members, regardless of the circumstances or location of the death."

"War does things to people," Sass told me after I called.

Sass is a 60-year-old custodian for a church in Ashtabula, Ohio, who also works as a substitute teacher. The son of a mechanic and a homemaker, he served in the Peace Corps in the early '70s, helping farmers in Nepal increase their productivity. He came of age during the war in Vietnam, lost several friends there and saw others come back irreparably changed.

Sass is the father of five grown children, including two sons in the military, one of whom served in Iraq. Becoming a father affected his view of war.

"I remember all the kids sitting down for dinner in 1991 when the news broke ... (about) the first Gulf War," he said. "I told them, 'Just think of all the families that are going to be losing their fathers, sons and brothers today. On both sides.'"

Sass wanted to raise Americans who understood the human sacrifice of war.

"No matter how our men and women die, they're still human beings," he told me. "And if they die during the war, their parents should hear from the president."

Not everyone agrees. In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, psychiatrist Paul Steinberg cautioned against "glorifying" suicide.

"Certainly, a presidential condolence letter after one's death is not exactly the same encouragement for suicide as the purported Muslim promise of a gift of 72 virgins after death," he wrote. "But the increasing number of suicides in the military suggests that we need to find the right balance between concern for the spouses, children and parents left behind, and any efforts to prevent subsequent suicides in the military."

I suspect Steinberg's good intentions bring little comfort to those who did everything they could to keep their loved ones alive and lost them anyway.

"Every death in this war is a human casualty, including those who kill themselves," Steve Sass said. "Instead of losing a limb, it's like something blew up inside of them."

Like every fallen hero, they served their country — until they couldn't do it anymore.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House, "Life Happens" and "... and His Lovely Wife." She is a featured contributor in a recently released book by Bloomsbury, "The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's 'A More Perfect Union.'" To find out more about Connie Schultz ([email protected]) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.