For Juliann Ashcraft, widow of Arizona firefighter Andrew Ashcraft, the longest week of her life came to a merciful end Saturday, when a message from her husband — and, perhaps, from God — presented itself in the form of a charred rubber bracelet. “It has been a whirlwind of emotions,” the young mother of four said during a telephone interview Saturday night as her brother drove her home from a planning meeting for Tuesday’s public memorial service for her late husband and 18 other firefighters. The 19 men died June 30 when treacherous, shifting winds turned the relatively small wildfire they were fighting near Yarnell, Ariz., into America’s most devastating loss of firefighters since the tragedy of 9/11.
