A Legendary Grandmother Who Committed Her life To Hugging Soldiers Has Passed Away

She was known simply as the “hug lady” and for a generation of soldiers deployed from Fort Hood to Iraq and Afghanistan, the diminutive grandmother was a steadying presence over the past 12 years.

Elizabeth Laird doled out hundreds of thousands of hugs, embracing soldiers as they shipped off and then greeting them in kind when they arrived back home. She made her hugs available at all hours of the day, regardless of the weather, becoming a military legend along the way.
“This is my way of thanking them for what they do for our country,” Laird told FoxNews.com last month. “I wasn’t hugging in 2003. I used to just shake their hands. But one day, a soldier hugged me, and that’s the way it started.”

For much of that time Laird was quietly waging a battle of her own against breast cancer, as The Washington Post’s Colby Itkowitz  reported after Laaird was hospitalized in early November.
On Thursday, Laird succumbed to her illness, passing away at Metroplex Hospital in Killeen, Tex., according to Fox News.
She was 83.


msn