Hero

When Pat Tillman died on April 22nd back in 2004, I was about to earn my master’s degree, get married, and we were thinking about moving overseas from New York City. My passion for football had waned, especially since the Raiders had recently been routed in a Superbowl. I barely remember the news of Tillman’s death. That is of course until the media circus really began to heat up and the clowns over at Fox news had turned Tillman into the poster child for the War on Terror.

I am sure I ignored or tried to ignore the image that was being created by the Bush administration. I was and am, however, enough of a football fan to have heard of Tillman to know that he was a cagey, undersized strong safety. An underdog who hit hard and didn’t talk much on or off the field. In short he was a solid player I admired. But once he became captain America meets GI Joe, I lost interest mostly because, like most Americans, I was duped and conned by the Army’s propaganda machine and eventual cover up of his death.

Now six years later, ironically on the anniversary of his death, I just finished Where Men Win Glory, the new Jon Krakauer book, which exposes the cover-up and sheds light on what an amazing human being Pat Tillman truly was. I wanted to read the book more so because of my love for Krakauer than Tillman. I have read every book Krakauer has ever written, and I had been waiting for this latest book well before it was released.

This post is not meant to be a review of the book. I will simply say that Krakauer once again works his magic. The prose is crisp and elegant. As always the author weaves two stories into a beautiful tapestry illustrating the tragic story of Pat Tillman with the equally disastrous stories of the War on Terror and the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda. I will leave it to you, reader, to get your hands on this book and see for yourself.

What I do want to reflect on in this post is the impact that Tillman’s life has had on me. The word hero is bandied about way too often for my taste in America. Our obsession with Super heroes, firemen, police officers and finally soldiers can be nauseating and cliché. So I asked myself what does the word hero mean to me? Do I have any heroes? Why? Why not? As always I started with a definition:

A hero in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. Later, hero came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice – that is, heroism – for some greater good, originally of martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.

Upon reading this definition, I was left underwhelmed. After all, ambiguous words like courage and moral can seldom be considered objectively. I liked the idea of people acting for the greater good, and I liked the idea of sacrifice. I suppose it was this generic definition that Fox News and the Bush distraction tried to pin on Tillman, after all an American football player who leaves his professional sports career and enlists in the United States Army the aftermath of the September 11 attacks to join the United States Army Rangers and serve multiple tours in combat before he was killed by friendly fire in the mountains of Afghanistan sounds like your typical American Hero to me.

This standard image was the only one most people had seen back in 2004, and honestly while I admire this type of self-sacrifice, I do not really consider these acts to be heroic. But I am getting ahead of myself, because I have yet to define a hero for myself. Perhaps this entry from Tillman’s journal will shed some light on what I feel are heroic characteristic:

I do not intend to get dramatic, but life is about feeling and emotion…Love, laughter, and joy, as well as pain, longing and sorrow, are all part of the ride. Without the latter you cannot truly appreciate the former, cannot come to understand just how much you truly care…I’m experiencing and growing and with this comes suffering, but it’s all part of the deal. I feel I am headed in the right direction.

Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, drives our curiosity, fuels our love and carries friendships, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limits…A passion for life is contagious and uplifting….In my life I want to create passion in my own life and with those I care for. I want to feel, experience, and live every emotion. I will suffer through the bad for the heights of the good.

For me heroes have always been men and women who are never satisfied with the status quo and people who act on their dissatisfaction to help ignite the souls of others. People who exude, “a passion for life that is contagious and uplifting.” People who devour knowledge, push their own boundaries, and subsequently force others to push theirs. Simply put heroes are people who live their lives to the fullest with no regrets.

According to speakers at his funeral, Tillman was very well-read, having read a number of religious texts including the Bible, Qur’an and Book of Mormon as well as transcendentalist authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The September 25, 2005, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that Tillman held views, which were critical of the Iraq war. According to Tillman's mother, a friend of Tillman had arranged a meeting with author Noam Chomsky, a prominent critic of American foreign and military policy, to take place after his return from Afghanistan. Chomsky has confirmed this.

I also feel that heroes should never be predictable and follow the paths their followers try to carve for them. The biggest tragedy, besides his death by friendly fire in a war he did not believe in at the hands of men he did not respect was the lie that was sold to the American people. Rather than share the fireball, non-conformist, vocal, anti-war who he was, he was shrouded in a blanket of clichés and lies. After being propped up as a false hero, he was never allowed, until now, to be seen as the man he truly was.


I guess at the end of the day, Tillman’s story, his true story is not that unusual. I have been lucky to try and surround myself with these types of people my whole life. But to read Tillman’s words comforted me in a way that I have not experienced in some time:

Sometimes my need to love hurts- myself, my family, my cause. Is there a cure? Of course. But I refuse. Refuse to stop loving, to stop caring. To avoid those tears, that pain…To err on the side of passion is human and right and the only way I’ll live.

Spoken like a true hero. The following song is my simple tribute to Pat Tillman:

Empty of Color

I am on an airplane and everyone, including my daughter is asleep, and this means I can watch movies. I have committed myself to almost five hours of Clint Eastwood’s sorrow filled genius. I am bathed in various shades of defused grays, a void empty of color, charged with emotion; I am glued to the tiny screen in front of me.

I have decided to watch Letters from Iwo Jima followed by Flags of Our Fathers. I know nothing of this island, this story, this battle, this sadness accept for this photograph.


The films themselves are brilliant. The first, Letter from Iwo Jima, portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers and is a companion piece to Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, which depicts the same battle from the American viewpoint. You can read more about each film on the wikipedia pages, but I highly recommend you carve out five hours one night and watch them together. I cannot say which I would recommend seeing first, but they should be viewed tandem.

I couldn't help but sit in the darkness contemplating the needless, pathetic human violence we so often honor. Rethinking words like glory, honor, freedom, and bravery. How long will we allow our young men to be manipulated by the few men in power who long to spill so much unnecessary blood?

Despite Eastwood’s poignant and intertwining stories, I couldn’t help but think how ridiculous it all seems. This propaganda wrapped in dogma that we mistake for truth. These constant wars for freedom and country and god. All sides blinded by self-righteous nationalism. What is it about our countries that so many men feel the need to kill and die for them? How long till they see that they are mere pawns in a game they were never meant to play? How ling before we see the other soldier as the friend and the governments as enemies?

The story of Ira Hayes is one of the saddest things I have ever heard. I encourage you to read the wikipedi page here.


I leave you with a few clips. Do yourself a favor and watch these two films. They will stay with you for some time.

Why Do You Blog?

This post has been swimming in my head for a few weeks, and it maybe time to haul it in and pin it up to the wall. As I start writing it, I am quite certain I have written it at least once before, but sometimes it maybe necessary to write it all down. Again.

I blog, because I love to write. I love what wrestling with words does for me. I write because I have no choice. These quiet bouts with expression help me stay sane. I often think about how difficult it must be for people who store up their thoughts and hope to deal with them on their own.

I blog for the same reasons I teach. I believe in communication and expression. I tell my students that all too often people build walls, because they are afraid of what people my say. But the walls we build soon become unyielding and grotesque. Huge edifices impossible to see beyond and impractical to tear down. We spend our lives behind the shadows, unaware of what lies beyond. Writing allows me to remove the brinks one-by-one.

One may argue that writing and blogging are mutually exclusive. That public writing/journaling is a narcissist act, a desperate writer looking for validation. While this maybe true, who doesn’t love a series of comments approving our thoughts, but I see blogging as more than that. If nothing else I see blogging as a great way to catalogue all my thoughts. I may never be committed enough, or talented enough to generate a novel, but in my own way I am documenting my life in these posts.

For better or for worse, each posts paints a tiny part of who I am. When I was mired in political angst, my mother gave me the best advice, “Try and write something that will help people.” I am not sure who she meant I was to help, but I see writing and blogging as great tools to help us all realize that we need not be alone.

Photo by Hypergurl - Tanya Ann

The human experience can be so complicated. I just hope that by confessing these thoughts in this corner of cyberspace, I can help someone out there understand that we are all connected, that we all share similar thoughts. If each one of us experiences a pixel of a shared consciousness, I hope my words, these posts can help us see the bigger picture.