Lis Olsen made a promise to her son, Toby: She would be there to welcome home his Army unit when it redeployed back to the U.S. from Iraq.

That vow was painful to keep.

Spc. Toby Olsen, a Mililani High School graduate, was killed along with three other soldiers in Karma in western Iraq when a roadside bomb hit their Humvee on Jan. 20, 2007.

A fifth soldier, Brian White, suffered traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for six weeks, Lis Olsen said.

"My husband looked at the autopsy — I couldn't," said Olsen, who lives at Wheeler Army Airfield. "All he said was, 'They didn't know what hit them.' It's just incredible that Brian survived."

But there was the promise, and Lis Olsen lived up to it. She and Toby's father, Jim, traveled to snowy Fort Richardson, Alaska, nearly a year later with 100 lei shipped from Hawai'i.

The lei were presented to soldiers who served with Toby "to say thank you and how proud we were of them and how proud that they had been a part of Toby's family," his mother said, her voice breaking with emotion.

As the sole survivor of the blast that killed four comrades, White felt guilt, as well as anxiety, about meeting the Olsens.

"But it was healing for him and it was healing for all those other young men because afterwards we talked story, and they laughed a little bit and told funny things about Toby," Lis Olsen said. "It was just the most amazing moment."

The therapy of that connection is something Olsen wants other survivor families to benefit from in Hawai'i.

Friday through Sunday, the nationally known TAPS — Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors — invites survivors of combat death, including parents, spouses and kids, along with "battle buddies" who served with someone who died, to come together at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Each year, the nonprofit TAPS draws thousands to its military survivor seminars in Washington, D.C., and has been broadened to include regional seminars across the country.

The upcoming Hawai'i program will include an adult survivor seminar and "Good Grief Camp" for children and teens. Several hundred invitations have gone out to Hawai'i families.

A total of 246 service members with ties to Hawai'i have died in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

On Friday evening, TAPS will host a reception. Saturday's session will include grief and bereavement professionals, followed by breakout sessions, including a "battle buddy" meeting, and a dinner. There also will be a breakfast on Sunday.

FILLING GAPS IN CARE

TAPS is intended to fill gaps in military care, and was started in 1994 by the families of eight soldiers killed in the 1992 crash of a National Guard plane in Alaska, said Ami Neiberger-Miller, who works for TAPS.

Neiberger-Miller also is a survivor. Her brother, Army Spc. Christopher Neiberger, 22, was killed in Iraq in 2007 by a roadside bomb. Chad Weikel, battle buddy program manager, lost his brother almost three years ago.

Army Capt. Ian Weikel was killed in Baghdad by a type of homemade bomb known as an "explosively formed penetrator" that hit his Humvee, he said.

Neiberger-Miller said she first contacted TAPS shortly after her brother was killed. She was introduced to another woman who also had lost a brother.

"I found with her somebody who really understood how I felt," she said. "Military loss can feel very isolating. Even though there are many people, complete strangers who feel an empathy for us, and want to reach out to us, at TAPS you meet people who know how this feels."

Neiberger-Miller said one of the most effective children's events is writing a private letter to a fallen relative and sending it off tied to a helium balloon.

"Many parents have told us after a child has had this kind of experience that the child will come home and say, 'You know, I really had something I wanted to tell my Dad, and the letter let me have a way to do that,' " she said.

Weikel, program manager for the battle buddy program, said TAPS offers military personnel a chance to link with other service members who have lost a friend. They can express troubling feelings, and do so outside the military, avoiding repercussions.

Weikel said he's talked with soldiers who have gone through the mandatory military counseling, "and when they've opened up and shared what they really thought, then they're pulled out of Ranger school and some of that stuff. So for them to be completely open and honest — a lot of times that has implications on their career."

TAPS is a "safe place for them to be able to come and talk and to understand, they are not alone," he said.

SURVIVORS FORGE BONDS

Lis Olsen, whose husband, Jim, is a colonel and an eye surgeon in the Army, also has a professional interest in the type of services TAPS provides.

She's an outreach director for Army Community Service, an Army program, and will oversee a new program called Survivor Outreach Services. The aim of SOS is to strengthen support for surviving families.

"The Army realizes that it has not done the best it can in maintaining support and contact for families long term," Olsen said, "and this SOS program was established in conjunction with the (Army) long-term case management and casualty assistance to make sure it is."

But Olsen mainly is an advocate of TAPS after attending two remembrance ceremonies in Washington, D.C. for those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and becoming aware of TAPS' work.

Nearly two years to the day after her son was killed, Olsen said his loss remains "very, very difficult." Toby Olsen is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

The family lived in Hawai'i from 1991 until 2001, when Jim Olsen was transferred to Germany. They moved back to Hawai'i last August.

Toby graduated from Mililani High School and was an artist who majored in illustration and received a bachelor's degree from Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design. He was a fantasy illustrator who liked to draw dragons, gnomes and other creatures, Lis Olsen said. For a year, Toby was a tattoo artist in Australia — his mother's homeland — before returning to the U.S. and following his father into the Army.

"There were stories (from Iraq) that they were fighting over his drawings because they wanted them for tattoos," Lis Olsen said. "He had tattooed so many of them."

She still has about 200 of his drawings, mostly pen and ink, that she wants to publish.

Her 28-year-old son's death and those of other soldiers in his unit, the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team out of Alaska, continued to have ripple effects after the unit returned.

Nineteen in Toby Olsen's battalion were killed, Lis Olsen said.

"There are lots and lots of divorces, lots and lots of (drunken driving charges)," she said. "My heart goes out to every single one of those soldiers because the things that they saw and did — even the ones that were able to cope the best — still cause suffering from nightmares."

Olsen expects the TAPS program to create some longer-term bonds.

"If the TAPS program can get (survivors) together, then immediately, you'll see, 'Oh, you live in Mililani, you live in 'Aiea, you live in Kane'ohe, let's get together and have coffee,' " Lis Olsen said. "There's a bond immediately because we've suffered a loss, but this will then start a long-term support."