Americans have come to know Pat Tillman.
Across the nation, hearts ached at the news of his death in April, a tragic victim of "friendly fire" in southeastern Afghanistan.
They knew of his sacrifice, eschewing the lavish and pampered life of a pro football player to join the Army Rangers with his brother.
To their everlasting credit, Americans have not lost their admiration for the values the late Army Cpl. Tillman epitomized. They recognize what manner of man died that day.
Here and there, tributes are piling up. A popular multi-faith online community known as BeliefNet has named Tillman its most inspiring person of the year. He is a candidate for Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. All well. All good.
Among Arizonans, however, Pat Tillman's death at age 27 was something far more personal. We cannot lay claim to the awful anguish his family and close friends felt when Tillman died, but it was something very close to that.
How many among us remember, with painful clarity, where and when we heard the news? With all proper respect to the Tillman family, he was our brother, too. Our son.
It is not the tragedy of his death that we remember as much as the joy of his short life. In truth, we barely knew the soldier.
Once Tillman chose to abandon the $3.6 million contract offered him by the Arizona Cardinals, he made his choice a private mission, abandoning the publicity that once chronicled his every move as a football player.
Until he chose to serve his country, though, we had long since claimed him as our own, an adopted brother and son. He was our fearless iconoclast, pursuing solitary meaning atop the light towers of Sun Devil Stadium, and robustly challenging all around him to join his chase for the undiscovered meaning of life.
"He was playing chess - and I was playing checkers," recalled Larry Marmie, Tillman's defensive coordinator with the Cardinals.
There was some kismet at play in Tillman's choice as a young football star in San Jose to strike out for Arizona State University when the time came to choose colleges.
The union transcended football. If he was not precisely Young Barry Goldwater Redux - chiseled, fearless, artfully profane and, above all, furiously independent - he was something very much like it. Tillman and Arizona were meant for each other.
The French dramatist Jean Giraudoux once wrote about the special comfort that people like Tillman give to those he leaves behind. His very lust for life, wrote Giraudoux, promises for those surviving him a far more rapid escape from grief: "Sadness flies on the wings of the morning; out of the heart of darkness comes the light."
Is it such a stretch to imagine Pat Tillman with wings? Not anymore.
On April 22, in the mountainous badlands of southeastern Afghanistan, Cpl. Pat Tillman met a tragic fate. The heart-wrenching nature of the incident - Tillman was, as the Army finally conceded, the victim of accidental "friendly fire" from his own platoon - takes nothing away from his memory. His countless friends and admirers in Arizona knew his heroism long before he even joined the Army.
So, the nation has come to know Pat Tillman, a very good thing that. But they will never know him as we knew him. He was, and is, Arizonan of the Year.
Across the nation, hearts ached at the news of his death in April, a tragic victim of "friendly fire" in southeastern Afghanistan.
They knew of his sacrifice, eschewing the lavish and pampered life of a pro football player to join the Army Rangers with his brother.
To their everlasting credit, Americans have not lost their admiration for the values the late Army Cpl. Tillman epitomized. They recognize what manner of man died that day.
Here and there, tributes are piling up. A popular multi-faith online community known as BeliefNet has named Tillman its most inspiring person of the year. He is a candidate for Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. All well. All good.
Among Arizonans, however, Pat Tillman's death at age 27 was something far more personal. We cannot lay claim to the awful anguish his family and close friends felt when Tillman died, but it was something very close to that.
How many among us remember, with painful clarity, where and when we heard the news? With all proper respect to the Tillman family, he was our brother, too. Our son.
It is not the tragedy of his death that we remember as much as the joy of his short life. In truth, we barely knew the soldier.
Once Tillman chose to abandon the $3.6 million contract offered him by the Arizona Cardinals, he made his choice a private mission, abandoning the publicity that once chronicled his every move as a football player.
Until he chose to serve his country, though, we had long since claimed him as our own, an adopted brother and son. He was our fearless iconoclast, pursuing solitary meaning atop the light towers of Sun Devil Stadium, and robustly challenging all around him to join his chase for the undiscovered meaning of life.
"He was playing chess - and I was playing checkers," recalled Larry Marmie, Tillman's defensive coordinator with the Cardinals.
There was some kismet at play in Tillman's choice as a young football star in San Jose to strike out for Arizona State University when the time came to choose colleges.
The union transcended football. If he was not precisely Young Barry Goldwater Redux - chiseled, fearless, artfully profane and, above all, furiously independent - he was something very much like it. Tillman and Arizona were meant for each other.
The French dramatist Jean Giraudoux once wrote about the special comfort that people like Tillman give to those he leaves behind. His very lust for life, wrote Giraudoux, promises for those surviving him a far more rapid escape from grief: "Sadness flies on the wings of the morning; out of the heart of darkness comes the light."
Is it such a stretch to imagine Pat Tillman with wings? Not anymore.
On April 22, in the mountainous badlands of southeastern Afghanistan, Cpl. Pat Tillman met a tragic fate. The heart-wrenching nature of the incident - Tillman was, as the Army finally conceded, the victim of accidental "friendly fire" from his own platoon - takes nothing away from his memory. His countless friends and admirers in Arizona knew his heroism long before he even joined the Army.
So, the nation has come to know Pat Tillman, a very good thing that. But they will never know him as we knew him. He was, and is, Arizonan of the Year.