In the middle of the ad the boy pauses, as does the music, and he gazes up at the statue of Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman outside State Farm Stadium in Glendale. He believed in something bigger than himself, and he loved it so much he sacrificed everything for it.Honor Before Glory: Pat Tillman in Afghanistan Closeĭuring the broadcast of Super Bowl LIV in 2020 a three-minute commercial featured a boy with a football dashing past several current and former National Football League stars who encouragingly yell, “Take it to the house, kid!” amid cheerful music. For everything that counts, Tillman was the most special athlete of his generation. Did anyone there see anyone with Tillman's courage? People compared statistics, and they shared opinions, and they talked of the glorious attributes of the players. There were a thousand agents and a million fans and a billion adjectives hovering around the draft. Did anyone find anyone with Tillman's commitment? They have timed them and tested them, dissected them and debated them. They have taken the measure of their new applicants. Did anyone there have Tillman's character? There were young, talented players eager to try to take a run at the fame and fortune he left behind. There were hundreds of players and hundreds of telephones. The day after everyone found out Tillman had been killed, the teams of the NFL took turns picking players from the colleges across the country. But it is no longer the measure of the man. How good was he? That doesn't seem very important now, does it? It's like wondering how good a wood-chopper Abe Lincoln was. When Tillman went into the service, that seemed like a very big thing. To most of us, another tower fell Friday. And so a part of the rest of us died with him. He was the one we all knew, and in the comfort of our own lives, it was easy to latch onto Pat Tillman. He was the rich, comfortable American who had been roused to action after his country was attacked. The very point of Tillman's sacrifice is that his death isn't more important to the others.īut Tillman was the Known Soldier. There have been 700 American soldiers die in Iraq, more than 100 more in Afghanistan. A lot of people have died in the Middle East, and to their families, their tragedy was just as bad as this one. No matter how you feel about this particular war, kids, the truth of it is that old men always talk and young men die. Others will talk about the wonder of his life. As the war lingers, the critics will point to the sorrow of Tillman's death. Instead, he died thousands of miles from everyone who loved him.Įven now, people will debate the death of Pat Tillman. In the final scene, maybe he would have reclaimed his old position at safety. If it was, Tillman would have rescued the hostages and beaten the enemy and rushed home and kissed his wife. Until the word leaked out, blunt and indelicate, that he had been killed in action. Other stories came and went, and the pages turned, and no one thought about Pat Tillman for a long time. But then they were somewhere in the Middle East, and there was no fresh angle to the story. They didn't join to write a book or research a movie. They didn't want to be on the cover of People magazine. They were afraid it would appear as if they had volunteered for the publicity. But the brothers didn't want stories written about them. Dozens of us called to try to make interview requests. Reporters, like your Dad, tried to write about the rare resolve of the Tillmans. Tillman and his brother, Kevin, both signed up for the Rangers. He could have raised his own children and played with them in the pool and let someone else fight the war. He had a new contract that would have paid him millions of dollars. He was a last-round draft pick of the Cardinals who set a team record for tackles. He was a last-scholarship signee at Arizona State who become the Pac-10 defensive player of the year. A lot of people would love to have the life Tillman walked away from. Most grown-ups spend their time pursuing either luxury or celebrity, and Tillman had them both. Once, only a couple of years ago, Tillman had it made. We knew he had swapped one uniform for another, one helmet for another, and he had given up being a rich man to be a poor one and fight for his country. A lot of us felt like crying when we heard Tillman had died.
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