Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed legislation on Tuesday that finally closes a gap New Hampshire’s Gold Star families have lived with for twenty years. Under HB 1078, the state’s special Gold Star license plate, until now reserved for the mothers of service members killed in action, will be available in separate versions for fathers and for immediate family members. The plates will read “Gold Star Mother,” “Gold Star Father,” or “Gold Star Family,” according to reporting by the New Hampshire Union Leader from the Executive Council chambers, where more than two dozen relatives of fallen troops watched the bill become law.

The signing took place on the eve of Memorial Day weekend, and Ayotte chose her language carefully. “As we head into Memorial Day, signing this bill reminds us of the incredible sacrifice that Gold Star families have made for this country,” the governor said. “We can never repay you for the sacrifice you have made. On behalf of a grateful New Hampshire, I just want to say thank you.”

For the families gathered around her, the bill represented something more concrete than a phrase on Memorial Day. It represented being seen. Stephanie Ouelette, who lost her brother in Afghanistan in March 2009 and now serves as the state’s New Hampshire outreach survivor services coordinator, captured it in a single line. “After 20 years, they listened to you,” she said. “This carries the weight far beyond metal, plastic and registering your car.”

A twenty-year wait

The Gold Star plate program in New Hampshire dates to 2006, when former Democratic Gov. John Lynch signed the original law creating a plate reserved for Gold Star Mothers. The timing of that first law has its own tragic resonance. Just months after Lynch put pen to paper, Army Spc. Justin Rollins died in Iraq in March 2007. Justin’s father, state Rep. Skip Rollins of Newport, has been pushing for the program to be expanded ever since.

Rollins recalled being in the room when Lynch signed a follow-up corrective law in 2008. He was in the room again on Tuesday when Ayotte signed HB 1078 into law. “To be here all these years later to finally get this bill to the finish line is so meaningful,” he said.

The story of HB 1078, however, is most closely tied to one family from Gorham. Staff Sgt. Tanner Grone died in a helicopter crash in November 2023 during a training flight near Cyprus. His mother, Erica, qualified for a Gold Star Mother plate under existing law, but she said the plate ought to also go to her husband, Steve, and to Tanner’s sister, Emily. Erica Grone and the Grone family helped lead the 2026 push that turned that argument into legislation, and the family was in the Executive Council chambers to watch Ayotte sign the bill.

That kind of citizen-led advocacy is how New Hampshire’s part-time legislature most often moves. Families show up. Lawmakers listen. Bills get drafted, amended, and walked through both chambers. Over the course of a single 2026 session, HB 1078 cleared the New Hampshire House and Senate and reached the governor’s desk in time for Memorial Day. Ayotte, herself a former state attorney general with deep ties to law enforcement and veterans’ groups, made signing the bill a public ceremony rather than a quiet desk-side event.

What the law actually does

The mechanics are simple, but the symbolism is the point. Under existing law, a Gold Star Mother plate was the only special Gold Star plate New Hampshire issued. HB 1078 expands the program so that the state Division of Motor Vehicles will produce and issue distinct plates for three categories of next-of-kin.

A “Gold Star Mother” plate continues the program created in 2006. A new “Gold Star Father” plate represents the change that several lawmakers said was decades overdue. And a “Gold Star Family” plate is intended for siblings, spouses, children, and other immediate family members of fallen service personnel.

The law takes effect 60 days after signing, which puts the operational start date in mid-July, but the new plates themselves will start being issued on January 1, 2027. That timeline gives the DMV the runway it needs to manufacture and distribute the plates. The Division of Motor Vehicles estimates the program will cost about $28,000 to produce the new plates and distribute them to eligible family members, a small line item for a program that lawmakers and the governor’s office described as long overdue.

Ayotte also urged family members to keep in touch with her office to make sure they receive the plate number that means the most to them. In a state that takes its license plate culture seriously, that gesture matters. New Hampshire allows family members to choose plate numbers when special plates are issued, and many families will want a number tied to a date, a unit, or a service member’s age.

The emotional weight in the room

Press accounts of the signing emphasize the human texture of the event in a way that legislative summaries rarely do. Rep. Tom Schamberg, D-Wilmot, lost his son Kurt Daniel Schamberg to a roadside blast while on patrol near the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Schamberg told the Union Leader that the day after the signing, May 20, would mark the 21st anniversary of his son’s death. His voice choked as he said it.

Stephanie Ouelette’s brother died in Afghanistan in March 2009. Before becoming the state’s survivor services coordinator, she served as a Manchester Police dispatcher. She was on the radio the night Manchester Patrolman Michael Briggs was shot and killed in 2006. Then-Attorney General Ayotte prosecuted Briggs’s killer, Michael Addison, who has appealed his death penalty sentence. That history, well known in New Hampshire law enforcement circles, gave Ouelette’s “they listened to you” line an additional weight that anyone who lived through that period would have caught.

The Grone family’s loss is more recent and just as visible. Helicopter crashes during training flights rarely make national headlines, but in a small state, a soldier from Gorham dying near Cyprus is a hometown story. The Grone family put that story to work, asking publicly and repeatedly why fathers, sisters, brothers, and spouses of fallen service members were not eligible for the same recognition the state had been extending to mothers since 2006.

Why this matters for New Hampshire’s Memorial Day

New Hampshire holds Memorial Day weekend close. Towns from Conway to Concord stage parades, place flags on graves, and read the names of local service members killed in action. Adding “Gold Star Father” and “Gold Star Family” plates to the state’s roads is a small change in DMV inventory terms and an enormous change in how the state’s transportation system carries forward the memory of the people it has lost.

The plates are also, in a quiet way, a recruiting and retention message. Service members and their families notice when a state government acts to honor sacrifice. Recent Granite State policy has tried to keep that signal clear. The same week that Ayotte signed HB 1078, the firefighters’ union endorsed her reelection citing improvements to pension and cancer screening for first responders, an issue closely watched by both veterans and active-duty service members who frequently move between military and first responder careers. Readers can see our earlier coverage of the firefighter endorsement for context on how Ayotte has paired ceremonial gestures with structural ones.

For more on the policy environment Ayotte is navigating, our overview of bills moving in the closing weeks of session shows that HB 1078 was hardly the only bill moving fast in the closing weeks of the 2026 session.

What comes next

The bill’s effective date in mid-July gives the DMV time to set up application procedures. Eligible family members will need to provide documentation of their service member’s death in active duty, and the agency will need to verify eligibility before producing plates. Because the new plates start being issued January 1, 2027, family members who apply this summer will receive their plates next winter rather than this Memorial Day, but the legal status of the program is now settled.

Lawmakers say the next likely step is outreach. Many Gold Star families never registered for a plate under the original 2006 law because they did not know the program existed, or because applying requires paperwork that families can find difficult to revisit. The state’s outreach survivor services coordinator role, the one Ouelette holds, is designed to bridge that gap. With three plate options to publicize instead of one, that work becomes more important.

The bigger story behind HB 1078 is that, twenty years in, New Hampshire is still finding ways to do for Gold Star families what the families themselves often have to do for each other, which is to refuse to let a loss become invisible. A piece of pressed aluminum on a registration plate will not bring anyone home. It will, every day, on every commute, on every interstate trip out of the state, remind everyone who sees it that a New Hampshire family carried a cost they should not have had to carry.

For Ayotte, signing the bill in front of those families on the eve of Memorial Day was a way of putting that promise into a form that lasts longer than a speech. Skip Rollins, who has been pushing for this expansion since 2008, summed up the moment as well as anyone could: to be in the room “all these years later to finally get this bill to the finish line” was the point.

What does HB 1078 actually change about Gold Star license plates in New Hampshire?

HB 1078 expands the state's Gold Star license plate program beyond mothers to include separate plates for fathers and for immediate family members of service personnel killed in action. The three plate options will read "Gold Star Mother," "Gold Star Father," and "Gold Star Family."

When will the new Gold Star Father and Gold Star Family plates become available?

The law takes effect 60 days after Gov. Ayotte's signing, but the new plates themselves will start being issued on January 1, 2027, giving the Division of Motor Vehicles time to produce and distribute them. The DMV estimates production and distribution will cost about $28,000.

Who pushed for the 2026 expansion to fathers and families?

The family of Staff Sgt. Tanner Grone of Gorham, who died in a November 2023 helicopter crash near Cyprus, led much of the 2026 advocacy. Rep. Skip Rollins of Newport, whose son Army Spc. Justin Rollins died in Iraq in March 2007, has pushed for an expansion since the original 2006 law was passed under then-Gov. John Lynch.

How can a New Hampshire Gold Star family member request one of the new plates?

Applications will run through the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles starting in mid-July, with plates issued beginning January 1, 2027. Ayotte urged eligible family members to contact her office to coordinate on plate numbers that may carry personal meaning, such as a service member's age, unit number, or date of service.

Why did it take twenty years to expand the Gold Star plate program?

Lawmakers and family members said the original 2006 law focused on mothers because that was the political and emotional starting point of the Gold Star Mother organization. Expanding eligibility required multiple sessions of advocacy, repeated legislative attempts, and the public push from families like the Grones and Rollinses to make the case that fathers, siblings, and spouses also carry the same loss.

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