–by Marie Tillman in The Washington Post —
Marie Tillman is the founder and chief executive of Mac & Mia, and co-founder and board chair of the Pat Tillman Foundation. She is the author of “The Letter: My Journey Through Love, Loss, and Life.”
I often think about what legacy means, and I’ve learned something important about it in the 14 years since my first husband, Pat Tillman, was killed in Afghanistan. The way all of us live our lives is important to how we are remembered; but when you’re an icon, which Pat became, your legacy has to be guarded. An icon’s life and image enter the public domain, and people often try to co-opt it to suit their own needs.
Since last year I’ve watched from the background as professional athletes have taken a knee to draw attention to injustice and racial inequality in the United States. Pat was in the military, so many people want to attach a brand of blind allegiance to him and use him to argue that kneeling during the national anthem is unpatriotic. Pat was also against the Iraq War, so many others want to use him to argue against American involvement in overseas wars. His essence is bent to fit an agenda.
Pat’s life has become symbolic, but he was a flesh-and-blood man, and there was nothing about him that fit into a neat category. He was an athlete who didn’t really pay much attention to sports. He was outspoken and opinionated, but a convincing argument could change his views. His nuanced thinking was what I loved most about Pat — that he could love his country so much that he would sacrifice his life to protect it, but also so much that he could challenge it.
I’ve been asked to comment countless times on what Pat would have thought about the National Football League protests, but I’ve always declined. Over the years, I’ve become used to people wanting to know what he would have thought about something in the news, or assign a way of thinking to him based on what they know about who he was at 27. They want to freeze him in time. I find it ironic because Pat was always known as a free thinker who was constantly growing.
(To read the full article, go to https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-was-pat-tillmans-wife-but-i-cant-speak-for-him-neither-can-you/ )
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“The way all of us live our lives is important to how we are remembered, but when you’re an icon, which Pat became, your legacy has to be guarded. An icon’s life and image enter the public domain, and people often try to co-opt it to suit their own needs. … Pat’s life has become symbolic, but he was a flesh-and-blood man, and there was nothing about him that fit into a neat category. … I think that patriotism is complex, like Pat himself. It is not blind or unquestioning.”
Unfortunately, the NFL, the military, and right-wing politicians have enshrined Pat Tillman as a patriotic icon, while the man has fallen by the wayside. His name & imageused as a recruiting prop at “Salute to Service” football games to celebrate “heroic sacrifice,” “military service,” and mindless “patriotism”.
Instead, we should honor Pat Tillman’s memory by honoring the man, not the myth. The iconoclast, not the icon. As his mother, Mary Tillman, said, “Pat would have wanted to be remembered as an individual, not as a stock figure or political prop. Pat was a real hero, not what they used him as.”
To learn more, I would recommend the 2010 documentary “The Tillman Story,” reading Mary Tillman’s 2008 book “Boots on the Ground by Dusk,” Marie Tillman’s 2012 book “The Letter,” and Jon Krakauer’s updated PAPERBACK book “Where Men Win Glory.” And, I’ve written extensively about the bi-partisan whitewash of Tillman’s friendly-fire death at the Feral Firefighter blog.