The Letter

by Marie Tillman

  “So, let’s begin,” Melissa said. “Any volunteers?”

  The guy next to me raised his hand.

  “Great, then we’ll go around the table clockwise.”

  That meant I’d be next. I started to sweat and barely listened to the presentation the guy gave about the environmental advantages of his company’s product. What was I going to say? I hadn’t prepared for this. I wanted to run out of the room. When my turn came, I went up in front of the room with a few notes I’d jotted down about the foundation and our work with veterans and education. My hands were shaking and I could tell my voice was, too. I had an intense urge to cry but quickly got through my speech and sat down.

  We went through everyone’s presentations, then took a little break before moving on to the next step of watching the videos. During the break, one of the speaking company’s owners, Mary, came up to me and introduced herself. She’d been in the back of the room, quietly observing. She looked to be in her midfifties and had kind eyes and an easy way about her.

  “I know this must be difficult for you,” she said in a motherly way that made me relax for the first time all morning. “You’ve been through so much.

  “Your presentation is a little different from the other executives here,” she added. “I realize it’s very personal, but that’s what also makes it powerful. Why don’t we go into my office and we can work together one-on-one for the rest of the day?”

  I was grateful for her kindness and willingness to help, and the thought of not having to suffer through a group examination was instantly appealing. I was a little embarrassed about the need for special attention but quickly got over it as I followed her to her office.

  “You’re at a place right now where you’re nervous and stressed about getting up and speaking,” Mary said once we’d settled in. “The techniques are things you can learn and perfect, but what you need to realize first is that you have something powerful and important to say.”

  We worked intently for the rest of the afternoon. We talked about Pat, the foundation, and what I most wanted people to know. She helped me see that I could share my story with people but still maintain comfortable boundaries. I left that day feeling much better, but the real test came several weeks later, at my next public appearance.

  The foundation was holding its year-end dinner, an event that celebrated our scholars and brought together the community of donors and people who had supported the organization over the years. I practiced my speech all afternoon, talking to myself as I paced around my hotel room. Thinking back to my jitters before the Clinton School talk, I felt more prepared and optimistic that this experience would be better.

  When it was finally time to step out onto the stage, I took a deep breath and started my memorized remarks. Being up there was almost an out-of-body experience; I was disconnected. Then, a few minutes in, something happened. I became instantly aware that I was up in front of a crowd. I heard a voice inside my head say, Wow, this is not that bad. But that little break in concentration threw me off autopilot, and I became acutely aware of all the eyes looking up at me. I took a moment to look down at my notes, which I had brought just in case, and tried to steady myself. I glanced at my notes several more times and skipped over a large section I had meant to include. Though not a complete success, the speech was better than any I’d given, and I tried not to chastise myself too much for not being perfect. Like every skill in life, with practice and in time, it would become better.

  Public speaking was a huge hurdle to overcome, but it was not by any means the only one. Logistically, running the foundation was difficult, because I was traveling back and forth between Los Angeles and Arizona, which made it harder for me to meet people and make a life for myself in Los Angeles. And though I’d supervised people in previous jobs, it was the first time I was the boss. Some of my employees were much older than I was, and I had to learn that though I wanted a friendly atmosphere, I couldn’t be buddies with everyone. I drew on qualities of my former bosses that I’d liked, and tried to emulate them, tried to be in tune with my employees, giving them the structure and guidance they needed to do their jobs well, but enough flexibility that they’d feel empowered. There were many elements to running the foundation, and I’d never run a business before. I now oversaw personnel, fund-raising, operations, communications, scholar selection, everything. I needed to spearhead our vision and strategy while making sure that we had office space and that everyone’s paychecks were signed. We’d get requests to partner with organizations, and staff would look to me and ask, “What do you want to do?” The truth was I had no idea. I worried incessantly about making the right decisions, and it took me months to realize there wasn’t really a wrong decision. I just needed to conduct business the way I thought it should be done.

  Emotionally the job was difficult, as well. There were still the questions, still the outpouring of sympathy. Though almost four years had passed, and I was doing better than ever, the foundation had somehow thrust me back into the role of widow. I didn’t see myself that way, but others did. I was constantly approached by people who would say things like “I’m so sorry about what happened to you.” They were very nice, well-meaning comments by nice, sympathetic people. But it’s awkward so many years later. It’s hard when someone is looking at you with pity to respond with “Thanks. So, where are you from?”

  I encountered misconceptions almost daily in my work for the foundation. Once after I’d given a presentation to potential donors, a businessman in attendance took me aside and said I was totally different from what he’d thought I’d be, and the foundation was totally different. I’m not sure what he’d expected—an old woman, dressed in black, who frowned all the time and cried at the drop of a hat?

  Five minutes into a conversation with another group of potential donors, one said, “You’re so young. Aren’t you going to move on? How long are you going to do this?” As if my involvement in the foundation was about my personal grief. Even my dad said to me that he wasn’t sure it was good for me to run the foundation, that he worried it would keep me down. But it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t going around crying each day as I held up photos of Pat, trying to make people feel compelled to do something because of their sympathy and guilt. That wasn’t me at all, and that wasn’t my message. The foundation started because of Pat, but it wasn’t about him so much as it was about the spirit of service he’d instilled in me and in others he’d been close to. But still, I’d constantly be asked, “So what was he like?” and “Why did he enlist?” Questions that made me want to snap, “None of your damn business.” I wanted people to focus on the work the foundation was doing to help this generation of veterans get an education.

  It was wearing on me, so much so that I thought about getting out. Alex and Christine repeatedly checked in to see how I was faring, and so did Ben, who had been on the board of the foundation from the beginning.

  “Honestly, I don’t know about this,” I told Ben one day when we met for lunch. “I’m starting to think this was a bad idea and that I should just quit.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Why?”

  In a rush of pent-up frustration, I told him about all the questions, all the people who just didn’t get it, about how upset it still made me when people tried to mythologize Pat, and how aggravating it was that people couldn’t see past him to the good work we were doing. “And why does everybody think it’s okay to ask me when I’m going to get remarried and have kids, yet no one asks Beth?” I asked, referring to one of our administrators, who was forty-one and single.

  “Marie,” Ben said gently. “When you’re putting yourself out there in a public role, people are going to want something from you. It’s part of the deal, and it’s probably not going to change.”

  “So then maybe it’s not right for me.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. He was thoughtful a moment, then added, “But you also have to consider that you’re good at your job, and that we’re doing really good work, that we’
re helping people. I’m not saying you shouldn’t walk away, but you have to consider both sides.” He reminded me about the thank-you card we’d just received from a couple we’d helped. The husband had been injured in Iraq, and we were providing funding for his wife to go back to school so she could support the family now that the husband wasn’t well enough to work.

  “But I don’t want to pressure you at all,” Ben said, realizing it seemed like he was. I understood. He was just trying to illuminate all sides of the issue. “No one is in your situation but you.”

  Ben helped me see that if I left the foundation, I’d be mad at myself for not getting past the roadblocks. In certain lights, they seemed surmountable enough. I just needed to find a way to control the direction of conversations so that the questions didn’t get to me as much. Again, it came down to perspective and whether I could change mine. A line in Self-Reliance I’d returned to again and again was “Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.” I wanted to continue my work with the foundation and still move on with my life, and I started to believe I could do both.

  The next event I attended after my lunch with Ben was a gathering for Millennial veterans in Los Angeles, at which I was asked to speak. The conference was designed to encourage young veterans to use their leadership skills and experience to continue to give back to their communities. I wanted to let these veterans know that the Pat Tillman Foundation was stepping in to help the next generation, and I wanted hopefully to inspire them to continue their dedication to service in or out of uniform. The meeting was held in a hotel conference facility that felt rather impersonal, but the crowd was in good spirits and seemed excited to be there.

  Before I went onstage, a tall, young, dark-haired guy came up to me. He played college football and had followed Pat’s career at ASU and with the Cardinals. “Mrs. Tillman,” he said. “Thank you for coming today. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I’ve wondered for a long time why Pat did what he did. Will you be going into that during your speech?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I will.”

  * * *

  “Seven years ago,” I said when I stepped up to the podium, “Pat and I started a journey together when he enlisted. Like all of you, we believed that it was our responsibility to do something for our community, and that we wanted to live our lives in a way that stood behind that value. I am continuing on that journey today.”

  I went on for a bit about the work of the foundation; then I opened it up for questions, the part of the presentation that always filled me with dread. “Mrs. Tillman.” A hand rose in the crowd. “How did you feel when Pat enlisted? You were just newlyweds. Weren’t you mad?”

  “It’s difficult to be a military spouse,” I said, honestly answering her question while turning the conversation to the global issues I wanted to discuss. “I remember going in to work, and sitting through meetings where everyone was stressed out about a deadline, and thinking, ‘My husband’s in Iraq. Who cares about the deadline?’ It felt like I was living on an alien planet or something. It’s lonely, it’s frightening. You have to learn how to do everything for yourself, and in my case, I was far from family and friends, and felt isolated. Military families need support, just as I needed support. And too often, they don’t get it.”

  The speech marked a shift in what I was willing to discuss, and in the control I was able to take of the situation. I shared more than I ever had before about how I felt, but I focused on the feelings I was comfortable sharing. Almost as soon as I changed the tenor of my responses, I started seeing a difference in the people around me. More and more people approached me to say that they were military wives having a tough time, and that they related to my speech and me. One young woman came up to me and said she’d recently lost her spouse, and wanted to know what advice I had for her. I told her I thought grieving was an individual experience, without one remedy or solution, but that she should try to trust her gut and be confident that she would know what was best for her.

  I took a lot of strength from the connections I now saw I was able to forge with others. After Pat died, I had sought out stories about people who had also been touched by tragedy. I couldn’t read enough of their accounts of their difficult experiences, and how they’d overcome them. These were people who understood. And now I could be that person who understood. And I saw, too, that while my mask of privacy had given me control, sharing myself with others gave me power. But it had taken time and perspective to get to this place. I never could have done it in the first few years.

  In what was perhaps the most unexpected connection, I was approached in the office one day by one of the women who had worked for the foundation for several years. Marcy and I were friendly but hadn’t gotten to know each other well. I knew that she’d struggled to overcome breast cancer in her late twenties, but we hadn’t really talked about it. I didn’t want to pry, and she didn’t offer much information about the experience. But on this day, as we were sitting in her office, chatting, she said, “You know, Marie, I’ve always felt like we share something important in common.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yeah. I mean, I know our experiences were really different, but we both went through a crisis at around the same age.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that before.”

  “It changes you,” Marcy continued. “It’s why I wanted to work at the foundation, to do something important with my life. Somehow when you go through something like we did, you just want your life to be significant, you know?”

  I saw refrains of Marcy’s observation all over the nonprofit world once I started looking. And nonprofit or not, stories abound about people who suffer a tragedy and go on to devote their lives to a greater cause. It was certainly a large part of why I was involved in the foundation. Perhaps it’s so common it’s clichéd. But really, who cares? Because at the end of the day, regardless of why we were all there, we had decided to do something worthwhile, which in the end was the only thing that mattered. And as I stood among people like Marcy, focused on making the world a better place, I saw the embodiment of Pat’s world vision. I’d returned to the place I’d been when Pat had enlisted: holding hands with others, looking out on the world, ready to get to work.

  Conclusion

  “The first thing I saw as I walked off the plane was gorgeous, jagged, snow-covered mountain peaks.”

  Pat wrote that in a letter to me, dated April 9, 2004, just thirteen days before he was killed in the beautiful land he described. Since that month in 2004, I had felt an almost inexplicable pull to visit Afghanistan. Through the years I had explored many avenues in hopes of visiting this mysterious land, but I couldn’t safely and reasonably find my way.

  Then one day a way found me, in the form of the United Service Organizations (USO). After Pat’s death, the NFL had generously donated money in his honor to the USO, who built the Pat Tillman Memorial USO Center at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. The USO was putting together a goodwill tour and asked me if I would like to go along to see the center. I said yes immediately.

  “How long are you going to be there?” Christine quizzed me over the phone when I told her.

  “Not very long—I think I’ll only be in Afghanistan a day or two.”

  “What are you going to do there?”

  “I don’t know—they’re sending a whole itinerary. I’ll talk to people, take it all in.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Yes, relatively. They wouldn’t have let me come along if not. Do you really think they’d want that kind of PR hanging over them?”

  “No, I guess not,” Christine said. “I think it’s great, I do. I guess I just wonder what you’re looking for there. It might be really hard for you.”

  She was right and wrong at the same time. I wasn’t looking for closure, which is what she meant. I didn’t anticipate that by seeing where Pat had
died and seeing the center in his honor, I’d all of a sudden have a new acceptance of the loss. But she was right that it might be hard. Through my work with the foundation, I’d grown used to seeing men and women in uniform again, but it was one thing to attend meetings and fund-raisers on US soil, and another altogether to be thrust into the middle of their action, to be surrounded by military protocol again. But the immersion was also one reason I felt it was important to go. Since I was advocating for veterans at home, I felt like I needed a glimpse of their experiences abroad.

  My alarm clock went off at four a.m., starting the long trek from Los Angeles to Afghanistan. It was still dark outside and I was quite cozy in bed, but I jumped up, eager to get going. I took a short flight from Los Angeles to Dallas, where I met up with the rest of the traveling group. The headliners were Gary Sinese and his Lt. Dan Band. Gary had received an Oscar nomination for playing the memorable Lieutenant Dan in the film Forrest Gump, and then years later matched the character name with his skills playing the bass and his passion for helping the USO. His band frequently performed for the military and for charities. I admired his generosity and commitment and immediately bonded with his troupe. Our group made a brief overnight stop at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany—the largest military hospital outside the United States—then boarded our flight to Kabul.