Death Of A Volunteer: One For The Team

• Share

(4 of 4)

Despite his All-American story, he turned down a multitude of TV, movie and book deals. Last July, when both Tillmans won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPY Awards ceremony on ESPN, they made no public statement and sent their younger brother Richard to pick up the award.

Mark Brand, an assistant athletic director at ASU, says that when people asked Tillman why he was enlisting, he always had the same answer: he needed a new challenge. He got one at Fort Benning, Ga., where both Tillmans spent the second half of 2002 training to become Army Rangers, an elite outfit that only graduates about a third of those who start the course. They reached Iraq some time last year. In Baghdad Pat made frequent calls to Bauer. "He never talked about any of the combat part of it," says Bauer. "That just was Pat. He never really got into anything that detailed."

It was only last month that Tillman left for Afghanistan. You wonder what he would have made of last weekend's NFL draft, with the scramble for money and Eli Manning's pout over whether he might be forced to work in San Diego and not a thought about how a death on the battlefield had put it all into perspective. But Tillman just might have objected again that he was nothing special, that he had his share of ordinary career ambition too. In the locker room before the Rose Bowl in 1997, he asked one of his coaches, Lyle Setencich, what draft round he might expect to be chosen in the next year. "I told him to get a law degree, that he was going to be President," says Setencich. "He said, 'I want to play in the NFL.'"

"You're fortunate when you come across a Pat Tillman," says Setencich. "But there are many Pat Tillmans across the country. The spirit of Pat Tillman is the heart of this country." Tillman would not have wanted us talking about him this week, but if we were talking about him anyway, that's probably what he would have wanted us to say. --Reported by Sean Gregory/Tempe, Nancy Harbert/Albuquerque, Laura A. Locke/San Jose, Tim McGirk/Islamabad, Alice Park/New York, Eli Sanders/Fort Lewis, Mark Thompson/Washington, Jill Underwood/Las Vegas and Michael Ware/Khost