His warning was not oblique. “I made them promise that they’re not going to bother them, not going to try and talk them into going to Albuquerque. I specifically went over that with them, and not in a roundabout way, and they promised me that this was not going to happen. They said, ‘Every thing’s fine, we’re not going to bother them anymore.’ ” His last words to the producer were, “They are at a vulnerable state right now and they’re not thinking straight, and I don’t want anybody railroading them.”
Apparently, the only words she heard were vulnerable and not thinking straight.
Shortly after Peterson left, the Cunninghams were told that the Phoenix truck was not going to be coming, and that they had to go to Albuquerque. The network was even going to provide a limousine. Jackie wanted no part of it; she desperately needed rest. But Red, who recognized after the fact that he’d been manipulated and coerced, that his grief had been exploited, agreed. “It shouldn’t have happened,” he said on the one-year anniversary of Jason’s death. “But while it was happening, I was thinking that I wanted the country to know the sacrifice that Jason had made.” So at one in the morning, he and Jason’s sister, Lori, were picked up and driven to a studio in Albuquerque, where from New York, Jane Clayson conducted a very brief interview with Red and the parents of one of the other soldiers who had been killed. They didn’t get back home until ten in the morning. Red Cunningham had been awake for thirty straight hours.
Late the previous afternoon, the manager of Conoco’s Gallup facility had heard from Red’s boss, Chuck White, that the media circus was out of hand and that the Cunninghams could use some professional help. He contacted the company’s director of public affairs for the Western United States, a former Associated Press writer named John Bennitt. He spoke with Jackie from his office in Denver, and then, at about the same time that Red had been driving to Albuquerque to pick up Jason’s brother Chris, Bennitt began working the phones. He called people he knew at the TV stations and newspapers in the area, telling them in no uncertain terms to call off the dogs, adding that if they wanted to talk with the Cunninghams, they could go through him. Unfortunately, there was little he could do about what was already happening at the home except contact the Gallup PD and reinforce Greg Peterson’s request for a police presence there.
It had been suggested to Theresa by the commandant of the pararescue school that the famous national cemetery overlooking the nation’s capital would be the appropriate place to bury the first PJ killed in combat since April 6, 1972, when T.Sgt. Al Avery and Sgt. Bill Pearson died during an attempt to rescue a downed aircrew in Vietnam, and she’d reluctantly accepted the idea. The problem this created for Jason’s parents was that there was no provision for the Air Force to pay for or provide transportation for the entire immediate family. Immediately after notification of a death, the next of kin receives a check for six thousand dollars from the Air Force to cover those kinds of costs. But the parents of a married serviceman are not considered his beneficiary or legal next of kin, and as a result receive no financial aid. The widow’s immediate concern was getting her own parents and family from their home in California to Valdosta, and then to Arlington. She says they spent more than eight thousand dollars on plane tickets—and that was taking advantage of so-called “bereavement fares” where they existed.
When this problem was communicated to Conoco’s district manager in Gallup, Mike Johnson, he got in touch with Bennitt, and it was quickly agreed that with all the hassles in post-9/11 air travel, it would be better if they provided one of the company’s aircraft to fly the family to the funeral.
Bennitt wouldn’t meet the Cunninghams in person until a few days later, when he picked them up at the Gallup airport on a Gulfstream G-4 jet, to fly Jackie and Red, their daughter and son, as well as their respective spouses, to Washington for Jason’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. In an era where corporations regularly get reamed for not doing the right thing, it’s worth mentioning that Conoco also picked up the entire cost of the family’s trip, including hotel and meals, and kept John Bennitt with them through the ordeal to serve as liaison with the Air Force and try to keep things as smooth as possible.
What Jason’s parents had discovered in their long day with the media, his widow was also going to learn in the upcoming week. That is, Jason was no longer theirs alone. “Everyone wanted a piece of him,” said Theresa, her voice revealing an anger that still smolders. Clearly she saw no merit in the presumption that, in death, Jason belonged not just to her and her girls, but also to the country. Jason was not a public figure, not an assassinated president, and Theresa did not naturally come to the role of Jackie Kennedy in a pink pillbox hat. Feeling like that, getting through all of the public ceremonies was going to be a painful ordeal.
The fact that there had been long-standing tension between Theresa and the elder Cunninghams also made this time more difficult, and things would get worse, not better, over the next few months. The military has its protocol for dealing with the death of a serviceman or -woman, and clearly the support system is structured to aid only the legal “next of kin.” In Jason’s case, “next of kin” were his wife and daughters. But Jackie Cunningham is very clear when she says the system actually abuses the parents of a young man, disenfranchising them at a critical family moment. She says, “They confuse ‘beneficiary’ with ‘next of kin.’ Jason was my son for twenty-six years.”
It’s easy to respond that he had been a husband and father, that clearly the son had moved on, and no matter what relationship he’d had with his parents growing up, the parents needed to let go. But there are millions of parents who have discovered that letting go isn’t easy. Fortunately, most of them are granted adequate time to let the transition happen naturally, albeit slowly. The Cunninghams weren’t that lucky, and that would serve only to make reconciliation more difficult, if not impossible. Whether it meant that they’d not only lost their son, but their granddaughters as well, only time would tell.
The days between learning about Jason’s death and his funeral were going to be especially difficult for Theresa Cunningham. They were like an unnaturally long intermission between acts of a tragic play.
Through tears she recalled her four-year-old daughter Kyla’s reaction the first night. “She told my friend Tanya that she wanted to get me flowers because I was sad, and it wasn’t until everybody left, and all that was left was me and the girls, that I put Hannah to bed and I talked to Kyla. And I said, ‘Do you know what happened to your daddy?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘What do you know?’ And she said, ‘He’s dead.’ And I said, ‘Do you know what that means?’ And she said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘It means that he’s not going to come home again.’ ”
There’s no way to recall that moment, or hear about it, without being reduced to tears. After a pause, she says, “That evening when I was alone with my daughters was the last that I was alone for a long time.”
On March 12, 2002, eight days after Jason Cunningham bled to death on a remote hilltop in Afghanistan, the ritual that attends the burial of an American military hero began at Arlington National Cemetery. With his fellow PJs standing guard in the chapel, one night of visitation was held for the family, and a second night for the military.
Theresa was having an understandably difficult time coping with expressions of condolence that, while sincere, didn’t convey sentiments that she thought were helpful. Perhaps her response was a reflection of how tough the wife of a pararescueman has to be in order to cope with the life the military asks them to lead.
“Jason wasn’t not careful. He was careful. So when he died and a few of the guys were saying, ‘Oh, if I had been there . . . ,’ that was very upsetting for me. It was probably one of the more upsetting things, and I don’t know why they felt the need to say that. I understand that they were saying, ‘I would have . . . ’ But I do not believe there’s anything anyone could’ve done, as far as making him safer. Yes, they could’ve brought him home.” She paus
es, thinking. “I don’t think anyone could’ve been more prepared. I think that he was definitely not taking chances.”
One thing that Theresa realized at Arlington is that the spotlight was on her, and wouldn’t be off until long after the interment scheduled on their third day there was over. How she wished that his death had not been the cause for public memorialization. “There’s a part of me that wishes that this hadn’t been the way he died, because I would’ve liked to have had some privacy. Everybody’s kind of watching you, and you’re thinking, ‘I just want to sit, I just want to climb in the casket and lie there.’ And you can’t act like a maniac. You’ve got two kids and everybody staring at you. So Arlington was a blur. It was people making strange statements, people fighting over position—it was obnoxious.”
When she’s reminded that those sorts of things happen every day, at ordinary civilian funerals, she responds, “Yes, I understand that. But a lot of people wanted to be aligned with Jason’s memory, because this was their one chance to be on the news.”
On an average day, twenty-three funerals are conducted at Arlington National Cemetery, most of them not attended by members of Congress, the Air Force chief of staff, the national news media, and a pair of Air Force HH-60G CSAR helicopters. When VIPs are expected, ordinary folks often have to wait—even if the ordinary folks happen to be the family of the deceased. The delay in this case was about fifty minutes, with the family waiting it out in a parked limousine.
When it was communicated to Theresa that some of the bigwigs wanted to speak with her before the ceremony, she was not happy. As she relates it, “So we’ve been sitting out here, Jason’s casket is sitting here in the sun for an hour because you people . . . I mean, if it’s Jason’s day, why is this about you?” And the response from the minions was, “Okay, we’ll be ready to have our interview with you in fifteen minutes.”
The assumption was that she’d agree to it. Wrong woman. Wrong place. “I said, ‘No. If they want to talk, they can talk afterwards.’ And we left. That’s when we started moving. I just thought it was very disrespectful to Jason and to us.”
The graveside service was quick—Theresa describes it as a blur—less than a quarter hour, very formal, no singing or extended remarks. She may not even have heard Air Force chaplain Martin McGuill say, “If we take his life as an example of selflessness, then we are called by Jesus to love more than we are loved and to forgive more than we are forgiven.” The ceremony concluded with a flyover by the helicopters, a twenty-one-gun salute, “Taps,” and presentation of the flag that had covered his casket to his widow, and another flag to his mom.
In attendance were more than fifty Air Force pararescuemen, and, with his arm still in a sling and in considerable pain, Maj. Don Tyler, the first patient Jason had treated in combat, specially invited to the ceremony by his widow.
Before she returned to the limousine, a sobbing Theresa Cunningham, holding tight to their two daughters, gently touched the gleaming silver casket.
Ten days later, at a memorial service held near her parents’ home in Cam arillo, California, Theresa spoke to those who’d come to pay respects at St. Mary Magdalene Church, and read aloud from the letter Jason had given to Chris Young after the Ditka 03 mission, asking that it be delivered to Theresa in the event he didn’t make it.
I could not leave this earth without saying good-bye to you. I will miss you and the girls immensely. I want you to know I died a happy man, happy that I met you and happy that I have two wonderful girls.
Theresa added, “Even in the face of danger, he was still thinking about us. I keep looking for a reason why. Why? We were really happy. We had two children. Was this his time? Was it his destiny? We don’t know.”
On September 13, 2002, in a hangar at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, home of the pararescue school, Air Force chief of staff Gen. John Jumper awarded the Air Force Cross (Posthumous) to SrA Jason Cunningham. The presentation was made to his widow and parents in front of more than four thousand who attended the solemn ceremony.
In presenting the Air Force’s highest award for heroism, General Jumper lauded Cunningham as an American hero with supreme dedication to his job and family. “Jason did not get a second chance, but he gave a second chance to others.”
The presentation marked only the second time since the close of the Vietnam War that the Air Force has presented its highest award for heroism. The other post-Vietnam AFC was awarded to T.Sgt. Tim Wilkinson, also a PJ, for heroic actions during the battle of Mogadishu.
Please don’t stand and weep
Those men I had to save
Not just because of courage
Or because I’m brave
Not because of orders
Or because it was my dream
I did it for my brothers
I did it for the team
So please don’t weep for me
For all I had to give
I did it for a reason
“So that others may live”
—Jared Marquis
Jason’s brother-in-law
Lucky to be alive, PJ Rob Disney receives an emotional welcome from one of his PJ buddies after being released from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. (Courtesy of Barbara Disney)
EPILOGUE
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
War is nothing if not fluid. Nothing stands still. Change happens every day, often throughout the day. When I finished the reporting phase for None Braver and returned home from Operation Enduring Freedom to write, the people I’d left behind continued to do their job. Some who go to war are lucky enough to rotate home, returning to family and friends, no worse for wear physically, although—whether or not they’ll acknowledge it—surely changed by the experience. Others come home broken, and have to begin the long process of healing with the help of doctors, nurses, physical therapists, as well as those who love them. Still others came home, and because those who do what they do are in short supply, took barely more than enough time to resupply, and were sent off to a new war.
I remain touched by those who spoke with me while their hearts were still raw and bleeding as though they’d been ripped from their breasts and scraped and bumped down a gravel road. That is the pain that comes from the loss of a son, a husband, a brother in war. It’s a pain that doesn’t heal as quickly as a broken bone or a bullet wound. This wound cannot be seen on an X ray; it is deeper, impossible to see, more difficult to treat.
Except, perhaps, for the superdevout, when a son or daughter, or husband or father, or brother or sister is taken from them, there is no consolation to be found in the all-too-often glibly spoken belief that “he’s in a better place.” If you tell that to a five-year-old little girl or boy who will never be hugged again by Mommy or Daddy, you’re fooling yourself, and you’re certainly not comforting the child. Perhaps as they grow older they’ll find some solace in the knowledge that their mom or dad died for our country, performing the most righteous mission of all, so that others may live. But in a better place? No. You won’t find a mom or dad in their forties or fifties, or a child of five, or a teenager of fifteen, who will buy into that trope. Their loved one, taken too soon, belongs with them, but that will never be. And they’ve had to get on with life.
Two months after Jason Cunningham was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his commanding officer at Bagram, Lt. Col. Patrick Pihana, found himself seated at his computer contemplating the fact that it was Mother’s Day, a holiday that forevermore would cause Jackie Cunningham’s heart to ache. He’d long ago done the expected military thing, written the letter of regret to the grieving parents, but as he sat at his desk, he was moved to write once again.
Dear Mrs. Cunningham,
I’m sitting at my computer at work on Mother’s Day, and struggle to tell you how deeply sorry I am for our loss—especially on this special day. I say ours, because Jason belonged to a tremendous group of people all over the country, including myself, that he touched during his wonderful life.
&
nbsp; Although I had never met Jason before, I ate chow with him the night of his last mission. We stood in an extremely long line waiting for our food, and we had some time to talk. Jason, like his colleagues in Pararescue, was a professional, brave young man. What struck me most was how easy it was to talk to him. He reminded me very much of my own younger brother. He was intense when we talked about his job, yet had a ready smile and a great sense of humor. You could also tell Jason was a born leader, and someone who made things happen. I always hoped if I ever fell wounded in battle, I would look up and see a PJ over me, someone just like Jason. Fortunately for the survivors of that battle, Jason was there.
Your son was very special; you already know that. Unfortunately, not everyone in our great country will know of Jason’s sacrifice, or how he upheld the highest ideals of our great nation. Although I am fortunate to say I have been in the presence of one of our great military heroes, I would do anything to bring him back.
My words will be lost to history. But having a deep faith in God, I know Jason’s presence here was a direct gift from God, and everything he accomplished will live forever in our hearts.
May God bless you on this special day.
Lt. Col. Patrick P. Pihana
Commander, 23rd Special Tactics Squadron
Months after Jason’s death, Jackie and Red Cunningham were still struggling with both the emotional and financial burden the tragedy had wrought. For months Jackie was unable to work. Initially Red’s employer, Conoco Oil, picked up the cost of counseling for the family. But as things happen these days with big corporations, Conoco merged with Texaco, expenses had to be cut, and the Cunninghams were told they’d have to cover the copayment out of their already diminished income. At the same time, they were out-of-pocket in order to attend the Air Force Cross ceremony at Kirtland AFB, as well as several other ceremonies honoring Jason’s memory. How could they not go?
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