Death Of A Volunteer: One For The Team

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All this week--and for weeks to come--we will talk about Tillman, who went out of his way to discourage such conversation. All soldiers give up something when they enlist. Tillman didn't want to hear that the career he left behind was any more important. But now that he's gone, he will be singled out, for a while anyway. Not just because he was one of the few famous faces in an all-volunteer Army that doesn't attract many. But because his sacrifice can stand for those made by all the others. And because we wonder if we could do what he--and they--have done.

Tillman grew up in San Jose, Calif., where his father Pat Sr. is a lawyer and former college wrestler. Like a lot of young Californians, the long-haired Pat Jr. could embody the surfer dude. In fact, dude was one of his favorite words. His other favorite word isn't printable. Cargo shorts, flip-flops and T shirts were his standard outfit. But at Arizona State University, he had the brains to get his marketing degree in 3 1/2 years--and with a 3.84-grade-point average. At school he got into the habit of climbing at night up the narrow ladder of a 200-ft. light tower at Sun Devil Stadium. He would perch at the top, look at the stars and wonder where he was headed.

Everybody's favorite story from his high school football career involves the game in which his team was so far ahead that his coach decided to bench the starters for the second half. But Tillman--a starter--still needed to play. As the half began, he snuck back onto the field and returned the kickoff for a touchdown. His coach was so upset at the stunt that he locked Tillman's helmet in the team bus to keep him sidelined.

In the fall of 1993, as a high school senior, Tillman got into a more serious kind of trouble. Coming to the defense of a friend involved in a fight outside a pizza parlor, he beat his adversary so severely that he was eventually arrested and charged as a juvenile with felony assault. Tillman entered a guilty plea, and the following summer spent 30 days in a juvenile-detention facility, all the while worrying that he might lose the scholarship offered him by Arizona State. He didn't, and on his release his conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor. Years later he discussed the episode with a writer from Sports Illustrated. "I learned more from that one bad decision than all the good decisions I've ever made," he said. "It made me realize that stuff you do has repercussions. You can lose everything."

All the same, at ASU, where few people knew of the arrest, they called him the Hitman--but this time, for what he did on the field. He lacked both the size of a typical college linebacker and the speed of a running back, but he was dogged and smart. In his senior year Tillman was named Pac-10 Conference Defensive Player of the Year --no small trick for a guy who weighed 202 lbs. in a world where your average lineman looks like a major appliance with a helmet. When a reporter congratulated him, Tillman admitted that he was proud to win but allowed that the whole thing had him a little worried that he might "start being happy" with himself. "And then I'll stand still, and then I'm old news."