Mona Taylor Gunn, Gold Star Mother, Receives 2024 Crusader Service Award

By Glen Mason

VIRGINIA BEACH

Catholic High School, formerly Norfolk Catholic High, recently celebrated Women’s History Month by inducting two graduates into the Catholic High Service Hall of Fame.

Mona Taylor Gunn, Class of 1969, along with Catherine Rivet Ing, Class of 1999, were honored at an all-school assembly and Mass on Wednesday, March 20, 2024.

Gunn, a Norfolk native and alumna of St. Joseph’s Catholic School, St. Mary’s Academy, Norfolk Catholic, and Norfolk State University, was celebrated for her longtime dedication to public education as a Norfolk Public Schools teacher and principal and for her path-breaking leadership in the American Gold Star Mothers, Inc., (AGSM) an organization for mothers whose sons or daughters died while in the United States Armed Forces or because of their military service.

Mrs. Gunn’s association with the group is dedicated to continuing the legacy of her son, Signalman Seaman Cherone Louis Gunn, one of seventeen sailors killed in the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.

Mrs. Gunn’s twenty years of membership in the organization have taken her on a physical and spiritual journey to connect with fellow Gold Star families, resulting in her 2019 election as the first African-American president of the organization.