ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) - Anita Carroll was born in San Francisco, California and left when she was only three or four months old. Anita explains it was partly because it was World War II. “I was born a few months before D-Day in June. ”

As the daughter of an Army Officer toward the end of World War II, this is how life started for Anita Carroll and there was no sight of slowing down.

“We flew from California, my mother and I to Virginia, and then all three of us flew back to California on three or four different flights because it was war time,” said Anita.

By the time Anita was 17 years old, she lived in 17 places. It was in Ft. Knox, Kentucky, where Anita graduated High School and eventually would meet her future husband, Tom McAdams.

“I’m in my swimsuit, for heaven’s sake, and he asked me for a date so I said ‘YES!’ Went home and walked in the door and I said, ‘Mom, mom, guess who asked me for a date?! Tom McAdams!’”.

They were inseparable that summer. Then, Tom went back to school at Texas A&M and was in the Corps of Cadets while Anita went back to the University of Kentucky. That Christmas break, Tom proposed and Anita said yes! Two kids later, Tom got orders for Vietnam. “When he did get there, he was assigned to the 11th Armor Calvary. His commander at the time was Colonel George S. Patton, son of the famous General Patton from WWII”, explained Anita.

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The two would be married for nearly 7 years when the visitor came that no one wants to welcome. “I had been out running some errands and came back to the apartment and saw a military staff care parked in the parking lot. I was devastated. In my case I think I had extra strength because I had been brought up in the military and I just so happened to not be so lucky,” said Anita.

The resilience that was bestowed on Anita as a little girl came out to play as a now-widow. A single mother with two kids to care for, she enrolled in a community college and got a degree in accounting.

Anita Carroll is not a veteran. But she did serve her country multiple times, not only as a little girl living on edge and never knowing if her dad would make it home alive, but then again as a young woman who gave up her life so her husband could give his.

Anita eventually got remarried, and now she’s a mom to three girls. Her story also continued on paper... she wrote a book called ‘My Gold Star Experience’.