DENVER (AP) — They traveled from all over the country to meet at a cattle ranch on the remote Eastern Plains of Colorado. They came to ride horses, pen cattle, rake muck and bask in the great outdoors. However, they came for much more — parents, siblings, spouses; survivors of loved ones lost to war came to heal from grief.

Kristen Howell and her two young children were living in New York in the winter of 2007. Just four days before Christmas, pregnant with her third child, she received the news of her husband's death. Pfc George J. Howell, deployed to Riyadh, Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Free...