PhotoDude.com

Fri. Apr 23, 2004

R.I.P., Pat Tillman

He was 28 years old. He’d made himself a multi-millionaire as a top notch player in the NFL. He was picked in the bottom 5% of the 1998 draft, yet won the starting strong safety position that year, and could have easily continued playing until 2010. By that time he would probably have had a couple of Pro Bowl appearances under his belt, and could retire having earned more money than 99% of Americans ever will … at the ripe old age of 34.

But in the spring of 2002, instead of preparing for his next money-making season in the NFL, Tillman tossed it all for a bigger cause.

...Tillman, entering his fourth NFL season, shucked it all and joined his brother, Kevin, in setting out to become an Army Ranger. What’s a three-year, $3.6 million pro football contract when you can collect $18,000 a year from Uncle Sam?

Pat Tillman gave up the glamour of the NFL to serve his country.

“Pat has very deep and true convictions,” Cardinals coach Dave McGinnis said at the time. “He’s a deep thinker, and believe me, this was something he thought out.”

Tillman made no public statement. He wasn’t in this for the publicity. But you didn’t need to dig too deeply to find an explanation for his actions. Friends said that the 9/11 terrorist attacks had affected him deeply. Cardinals defensive coordinator Larry Marmie, after a conversation with his former player, said Tillman felt he needed to “pay something back” for the comfortable life he had been afforded.

NFL.com: “Tillman follows beat of a different drum”

Sadly, it now appears he gave “the last full measure of devotion,” as CNN is reporting “Former NFL player Pat Tillman was killed Thursday while serving as an Army Special Forces soldier on a mission in southeastern Afghanistan.”

We live in an ugly world in which the recently invented epithet “chickenhawk” is often thrown about. Michael Kelly, killed while working as an embedded reporter in Iraq, said “The generally accepted definition of the term, which dates at least back to 1988, describes chickenhawks as public persons, generally male, who advocate war but who declined a significant opportunity to serve in uniform during wartime.”

It’s not a term I’ve used myself, but if it has an antonym, Pat Tillman defines it. In fact, since “chickenhawk” is a recently invented epithet, there’s no reason we can’t also create it’s opposite.

Tillman /’til-man/ noun (2004)
1: a person who sacrifices something of great value, their lifestyle, or even their life itself, for the sake of principle, or service to the country where they have prospered