Tillman ceremony: Remembering a Ranger

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The brother who escorted the body home from Afghanistan did not speak. Still, there was no mistaking the familial gene, that high-intensity gaze and determined jaw the Tillman men pass down from generation to generation, soldier to soldier.

Kevin Tillman, 25, sat in the front row, beads of sweat rolling down his chiseled cheeks. His hair was military-buzz short, his long-sleeved blue shirt ironed crisp, the cuffs turned up just so. Soon, he will return to the Middle East, to follow the internal muse that urged him to give up his own promising athletic career for a chance to serve his country.

It must have been unbearable, baking in the hot sun and listening to those campfire stories. One by one, his oldest brother's lifelong friends, his football coaches and teammates, sauntered to the open microphone. Some sipped first from the pint of lager that had been left at the edge of the stage, for one final toast. Others, especially youngest brother Richard, were boisterous, brash, their musings more appropriate at an Irish wake.

In a setting that might have been incongruous if it weren't so heartbreaking perfect, Pat Tillman was celebrated Monday for the way he lived his life. The hard-driving, super-intense, cerebral macho man who quoted Emerson and called everyone "dude" loved inhaling the ripe fumes from the Municipal Rose Garden. Not far from here is Leland High, where the Tillman boys played ball. It's hardly a stretch to imagine Pat stealing a kiss from Marie, the childhood sweetheart who later became a wife, in the same patch of rose bushes which now served as a pungent backdrop to his 27 years on this planet.

At one point, Richard burst forth with a stream-of-consciousness tribute, insisting Pat did not believe in religion, that he was not with God, that he was just dead. A war veteran standing not far from the stage bristled, while others cheered. Richard, the former quarterback-turned-aspiring comedian, looked more like an Elvis-wannabe, but despite the funky jeans and the cigarette dangling from his mouth, he, too, was clearly a Tillman: an iconoclast rebel daring to challenge the norm, oblivious to convention, slightly crazy. Soldiers who served with Pat and Kevin in the Middle East felt their throats clutch, and then their thoughts tumbled forward to the family in the front row.

"He was absolutely one of the more remarkable human beings I've ever met," said petty officer Stephen White, who was stationed with Pat in Iraq. There had to be a few in the audience of 3,000 who were not personally touched by Tillman, but even they nodded their heads, as if hearing of a legend they could not wait to pass onto their own children.

Tillman's handsome face has become the defining image of this war. He would have hated this fuss, this idea of him as a John Wayne hero out to avenge America. The details of his death are still trickling in; all we know is what the Army tells us, that Tillman died in Afghanistan in the ultimate act of heroism when he attempted to rescue his comrades caught in an ambush. He was everything most of us wish we could be: rich (or could have been, had he not traded in that $3 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals for the privilege of being an Army Ranger), selfless, and, in the words of former teammate Jake Plummer, "fearless, reckless, courageous, compassionate, beautiful."

If society demanded we devote 10 pages a day to, say, hairdressers and school teachers, then the first hairdresser or teacher who abandoned his or her career for the military would be that icon. Tillman's family and friends reiterated again and again Monday that his death should no way shadow the soldiers who have been wounded or killed. He will be mourned and missed the same way young men and women from the inner cities and small towns are mourned and missed.

"He was a war hero, didn't talk about it. He was a football hero, didn't talk about it," said Alex Garwood, Tillman's brother-in-law, and the more stories he and others told, it was clear Tillman was anything but ordinary. He was a professional athlete who stayed loyal to his first love, who read the Bible and the Koran, who shamelessly wore pink slippers and a kimono, who challenged everyone around him to laugh with him and at him. He was tremendously proud of his unibrow.

"It don't know what the Ranger motto is, but I'll bet you a buck he upheld it," said Pat Tillman Sr., when it was his turn to take the podium. He was the spitting image of his oldest: short, compact, back as rigid as an ironing board. "It has only been a week and it ain't getting much better."

Through his sunglasses, Pat Sr. could see his two remaining boys, one of whom is about to say goodbye. Kevin, a second baseman in the Cleveland Indians' organization, was the Tillman who first decided to enlist not long after the Sept. 11 attacks, following in the steps of a grandfather and two uncles who fought at Pearl Harbor. Pat insisted on tagging along. They served side-by-side in Iraq, cleaned toilets while training in the elite Army Ranger program, and headed off to Afghanistan together.

Spec. Robert Garcia, a medic on leave, could barely maintain his composure. His brother served with him in the same platoon in Iraq. "When you're in theater you don't get to say goodbye to guys," said Garcia, tears streaming down his face. "You don't get to pay your respects, not just to Pat Tillman, but to others who have died. I lost three soldiers (as a medic). You can't say you're sorry to their families."

An American flag was being presented to the Tillman family. Marie, Pat's widow, stood in the middle of this great cluster of friends and whispered something to Kevin. The rose garden never smelled so sweet.