There is one moment, in a film with many such moments, that just punches you in the gut. It was at the public memorial service held for Pat Tillman in early May 2004, a couple weeks after his death in Afghanistan. Government efforts to turn Tillman into a patriotic superhero were at full tilt, and nothing was yet known to counter the official story that Tillman had been cut down in a terrorist ambush even as he saved the lives of his comrades. But this moment—at a memorial attended by pious dignitaries from across the country, all doing their part to assist in the rampant mythologizing of Tillman—should have come as a warning to the government that the Tillman family was not to be trifled with.
After the solemn speakers had their say about who Pat Tillman was in life as well as in death, Tillman’s youngest brother, Richard, skipped the steps and climbed up on the dais, dressed not for a funeral but in T-shirt and jeans, holding a pint of Guinness. He thanked everybody for coming and then, raising the glass, said, “Pat isn’t with God. He’s fucking dead. He wasn’t religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he’s fucking dead.”
Richard Tillman’s grief and rage were so big that he could barely contain them, and that was before he knew that in the government cover story attending his brother’s death, there wasn’t a shred of truth. In spite of the best efforts of the White House and the Pentagon, the world would come to know he had been killed in an act of fratricide that was then covered up in favor of a horrible series of official lies.
-Esquire Magazine 8/10
Wow—I had heard about the whole cover up of the true cause of Tillman’s death, but never the part about his brother in his T-shirt saying all that “Pat isn’t in heaven… he’s fucking dead.” stuff. That’s pretty amazing. In the face of the government who was there, he was still brave enough to say and act the way he wanted. Pat died tragic hero, but his brother is kind of a living hero.
Richard Tillman rocks.
