thedrifter
05-21-06, 08:49 AM
Posted on Sun, May. 21, 2006
From senior high to Semper Fi
When they turn 17, most kids have a carefree day of celebration. When Cortland Ely turned 17, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
By Sarah Bahari
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
HALTOM CITY - Cortland Ely stared out the windshield of his black Jeep Wrangler and cocked his head, watching the blur of concrete and cars and strip malls.
In the rearview mirror, he could see his parents, Jim and Geneva, in the family's green pickup.
The two vehicles rolled down the streets, past grocery stores and mechanic shops, convenience stores and beauty salons. Thick, swollen clouds crowded the dark sky, threatening fierce rainstorms.
Save for the occasional comment about weather or work, Jim and Geneva rode in silence.
The night before, they pulled their son aside.
"Do you have any doubts?" Jim asked, looking Cort in the eye. "Because there's no going back. This is it."
Cort shook his head.
"I'm sure."
Now, as they made the short drive to the military recruiting office in North Richland Hills, Cort's mind drifted to the Marines, as it has every day for years. In just a few minutes, he would finally enlist.
As a little boy, he fought imaginary battles in back yards and playgrounds. Later, as a teenager, he longed for the adrenaline rush, the thrill of serving his country. This was his ticket out of Haltom City, his shot at exploring the world.
When he was 6 or 7, Cort started begging for his dad's Vietnam stories at bedtime. It was the only way he would agree to sleep.
So Jim regaled his little boy with G-rated war tales. The buddies he made in the middle of that thick, pitch-black jungle far away from tiny Dublin, Texas. The time he was shot on his way to R&R. The hellish three months spent recovering at a hospital in Japan, fighting a nasty infection that threatened to steal his leg. How, in the end, war changed him .
*
The men in uniform tapped their feet and made small talk. It was a Thursday, early April.
At 4 p.m. sharp, Cort walked into the Marine recruiting office, trailing his parents. He wore bluejeans, tennis shoes and a black T-shirt with a Marines logo splashed across the back.
A ball cap shaded his blue eyes. Tall and rail-thin, he looked too young to be here.
Sgt. Christopher Simms shook his hand, then directed Cort to the pull-up bar in the back of the office.
"In front of God and everybody, show us what you can do," he said. "Give me 10."
The tattooed sergeant counted, his voice booming. One. Two. Three.
Cort gave him 10, and then struggled to do one more. "That's all I've got," he said, dropping from the bar.
Flushed, he sat at the table with his mom and dad, who fidgeted, clasped and unclasped their hands.
"You guys ready for this?" Sgt. Simms asked, eyebrows raised.
Is a parent ever ready? Just shy of 17, Cort is their baby. He hasn't flown on an airplane since he was 2; he's never done laundry, reviewed a bank statement, rented an apartment.
What if he gets sent to Afghanistan? Iraq?
Jim and Geneva pushed those questions out of their minds. A promise was a promise.
Months earlier, they told Cort that if he graduated early from high school, he could join the Marines. At 17, a kid needs a parent's signature to join the military.
"At least he has a dream," his dad often says. "So many kids today have no direction. We're lucky."
They forced timid smiles and nodded at Sgt. Simms. Reaching across his desk, he handed them paper after paper. With a black pen, Cort and his parents signed each document.
The whole thing took 10 minutes. Ten minutes to let your son go.
Afterward, they drove to Marble Slab Creamery to celebrate, and Cort devoured a big bowl of vanilla ice cream with gummy bears.
In 38 days, he would ship out.
*
School always bored Cort.
When he was younger, he preferred playing pranks and getting a laugh. Sometimes, he would crouch by the dog's food bowl, pop a piece of dog food into his mouth like popcorn, then feed the dog a piece.
"You don't get much goofier than that," his brother, Arthur Queen, says.
Once, in the seventh grade, a kid dared him to scale a row of lockers for $5. Cort agreed, and then the lockers came crashing down on top of him.
Not long after that, his parents enrolled him in a small Christian school, where the principal paddled misbehaving students. In four years, Cort estimates, he got about 600 swats.
One day, barely 15 years old, Cort strolled into the Marine recruiting office with his friend Justin Stamps. The two boys had met at school a couple years earlier and were inseparable. They would dress up in camouflage and belly crawl through shrubs, spying on strangers. They played video games and paintball and shared books about the military.
"It's been my dream forever," Cort told Sgt. Simms that afternoon. "As soon as I'm old enough, I want to join."
Sgt. Simms cautioned them. "Look around. Check out the other branches of the military. Make sure you want the Marines."
Cort promised he would look into it, but he had no doubts. Marines saw action and adventure. They dove into the middle of danger. They were tough and savvy and strong.
Forget high school and homework. Cort belonged in the Marines .
*
Midnight came and went. Then 1, and 1:30.
One week after he enlisted in the Marines, Cort spent the night at a hotel in Irving. The next morning, a bus would drive him and the other recruits to Dallas, where they would take a three-hour exam, undergo a physical, and, finally, be sworn in.
His roommate planned to ship out for the Army the next morning and wanted to stay up all night talking and watching Spider-Man. Cort did not.
Finally, around 2, he drifted to sleep. The hotel's wakeup call jolted him out of bed at 3:30. Cort wasn't hungry, but he forced down eggs and bacon. Cort is about 6-2, and his weight hovers around 140.
"You're about 1 pound over the minimum," Sgt. Simms had told him a couple days earlier. "You need to eat, eat, eat."
At 5 in the morning, Cort started on the 10-part test: logic problems, word comprehension questions, math equations. He passed the exam, but never bothered to ask his score.
Next was the physical, and the eye test. The Breathalyzer. A urine sample. Stretch exercises in nothing but your skivvies.
A grim-faced nurse drew his blood. She jerked the needle out of his arm, but Cort didn't flinch.
Walking away, he scrunched his nose. "That actually really hurt."
At the end of the day, he and six other recruits gathered in a red-carpeted room. A Marine stood on the podium, and Cort raised his right hand and swore to defend and protect the United States of America.
It was his 17th birthday .
*
When he got home that night, Cort's mom asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday.
By sleeping, he told her.
Later that night, she asked again. Nothing, he replied. Before she went to work the next morning, she wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table.
"Cortland," the note began. "I am your mother, and it's my instinct to protect you for as long as I can. It went against my instinct to sign those papers. I did because I know it's what you want.
"But you have to let me celebrate your birthday. This is your last birthday as a kid, in this house."
That night, they grilled hamburgers, sang Happy Birthday and ate store-bought chocolate cake .
*
In the beginning, Geneva threatened to not sign Cort's enlistment papers. She had hoped he would go to college and get a job nearby.
Cort will always be her baby. She had him when she was 39, 15 years after her first child and nine years after her second.
"We're more like his grandparents than his parents," she often jokes.
Lately, she catches herself studying him when he's not looking. His back has gotten so broad, and his arms are muscular. He's a good foot taller than she is.
Other military moms have told her that when you see your child at basic training graduation, you barely recognize him or her. They look older, more mature, like a different person. How strange, she thinks.
Geneva let Cort join because it was the right thing to do. Who was she to stand in the way of his dreams?
But that doesn't mean it's easy.
On a Tuesday night in mid-April, Geneva and Cort were watching The Unit, a CBS television drama about a special-forces unit. During the episode, the crew was ambushed in the Middle East.
Geneva got up and walked out of the living room. She didn't want her son to see her cry .
*
Cort's empty bedroom will be tough, Jim says.
Should they leave the door open or closed? Should they go in and sit on the bed? Or pretend the room doesn't exist?
Jim has been on the other side of this. In 1966, during the Vietnam War, he left his home for Army basic training.
Every night, his mom and dad watched the war on their TV in Texas and fretted. Jim didn't understand the fuss. It was just boot camp, he told them.
Forty years later, he gets it. He remembers how his relationship with his parents changed after basic training.
"Not better. Not worse. Just different," he says.
Jim and Cort have always been close. For years, they hunted and camped and hiked in New Mexico.
When Cort was in the third grade, his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Without thinking, Cort replied, "Vice president of Willbanks Metals."
Just like his dad.
Cort's bedroom is full of his dad's old Vietnam mementos. A Purple Heart. Medals and stripes. An old Army hat.
A drawing Cort made years ago still hangs in Jim's office at Willbanks Metals, a manufacturing plant in north Fort Worth.
The picture shows two people - a tall guy and a little guy. Father and son, standing side by side, wearing big grins.
Across the top, in a child's writing, it says "I Love Dad."
Jim held the drawing up and smiled sadly.
"It's a funny thing," he said, "being so proud of him and so worried at the same time. "
*
Two weeks before Cort was scheduled to leave for boot camp in San Diego, he had a long list of errands.
Sell his Jeep. Buy a new car. Get in better shape. Buy an address book. Head to the lake for a long weekend with his family. Say goodbye.
Sgt. Simms called one morning to ask for a favor.
May 22 was packed with other recruits. Would he consider shipping out one week early?
That meant leaving home on May 14, Mother's Day. That night, he and the other recruits would stay at a hotel. The next day, May 15, Cort would fly out.
"Sure," he said. "That'll be fine."
After hanging up, he nervously dialed his mom's phone number .
*
Cort doesn't keep up with the war in Iraq much these days. He did in the beginning, but now it's all car bombs and kidnappings.
"Sneak attacks," he says.
He has no idea if or when he'll get sent overseas. But when it's time, he says, he'll be ready.
He hopes to make the Marines a career. Maybe become a sniper. After three months of basic training, he'll probably head to the East Coast for infantry training. And after that, who knows.
Death rarely crosses his mind.
Cort plays an Xbox game where you walk around trying to shoot the bad guys. When you kill someone, the screen goes fuzzy and the dead guy vanishes.
In some ways, Jim says, the game is eerily realistic.
"But in real life, no one disappears. They just lay there, pleading with their eyes, taking their last few breaths," he says. "It's something you never forget."
Jim wonders if Cort realizes the finality of death.
One day not long ago, Cort was talking to his friend Justin, who graduated from basic training a couple months ago.
"You know," Justin said, "it'll be a miracle if we're both alive when we're 35."
"Yeah," Cort said. "You're probably right."
Later, he thought back to that conversation.
"If I die, at least I would be doing what I love," Cort said. "What better way to go than defending your country? "
*
On the Saturday before he left, his parents threw a farewell cookout. Cars lined the street and four small American flags flew in the front yard.
A friend brought a chocolate cake with white frosting. In cursive writing, the cake said, "The Few. The Proud. Cortland."
Before eating, everyone bowed their heads and prayed: "Father," Jim said, "I ask for your blessing today for Cort as he prepares to enter a different phase of his life, a very important phase."
Geneva still couldn't believe her son was leaving a week early. When he first told her, she said no. Absolutely not. May 22 was circled on a calendar and burned into her mind.
Eventually, she relented. "It was the right thing to do," she said.
That evening, everyone talked and laughed and ate fajitas. Cort opened letters and gifts. David Friesen, his dad's co-worker, gave him a U.S. Marines knife.
"Awesome," Cort said.
"Good luck trying to get that on the plane," Friesen joked.
After a few hours, the crowd thinned out. Cort, his brother and a few friends stayed up all night, talking and telling stories.
On his last night at home, he didn't want to waste time sleeping .
*
It was time to say goodbye.
Nerves finally struck. Cort couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep.
In just a few hours, he would arrive at boot camp in California. For the next three months, drill instructors would be the closest thing to parents. No cell phone or e-mail. No TV or Xbox or sleeping in until noon.
Letter-writing would become his lifeline. His parents promised to write every day.
Flight 1961 to San Diego was scheduled to leave at 4:42 p.m. Monday. His family - mom, dad, sister Evie Force and niece Caroline Force - met him at the airport a couple hours beforehand.
Cort's stomach flipped and turned uneasily. His parents persuaded him to grab a hamburger from the airport Wendy's. No one knew when he would eat next.
Cort had packed almost nothing. The T-shirt and black warm-up pants he was wearing. His contacts, Social Security card, driver's license and $20.
Military moms had warned his parents that they probably wouldn't hear from Cort for the first three weeks. Three weeks. One day would have felt strange.
About 4:15, the boarding call for Flight 1961 came over the loudspeaker.
Cort just wanted to board the plane and sleep. He took a deep breath, looked around Terminal C and stepped forward.
"Come back here," his mom said. She wrapped her arms tightly around her son.
Jim and Cort stood awkwardly in front of each other. Jim pulled him in for a hug, then they shook hands.
"Good luck," he told him.
Slowly, deliberately, Cort treaded toward the check-in counter and handed the attendant his boarding pass. Jim and Geneva watched their son walk through the gate.
On the boarding ramp, he turned back only once. He saw his parents amid a crowd of people, still standing, still watching.
Then Cort smiled, flashed a goofy thumbs-up and waved goodbye.
Sarah Bahari, (817) 685-3863
sbahari@star-telegram.com
Ellie
From senior high to Semper Fi
When they turn 17, most kids have a carefree day of celebration. When Cortland Ely turned 17, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
By Sarah Bahari
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
HALTOM CITY - Cortland Ely stared out the windshield of his black Jeep Wrangler and cocked his head, watching the blur of concrete and cars and strip malls.
In the rearview mirror, he could see his parents, Jim and Geneva, in the family's green pickup.
The two vehicles rolled down the streets, past grocery stores and mechanic shops, convenience stores and beauty salons. Thick, swollen clouds crowded the dark sky, threatening fierce rainstorms.
Save for the occasional comment about weather or work, Jim and Geneva rode in silence.
The night before, they pulled their son aside.
"Do you have any doubts?" Jim asked, looking Cort in the eye. "Because there's no going back. This is it."
Cort shook his head.
"I'm sure."
Now, as they made the short drive to the military recruiting office in North Richland Hills, Cort's mind drifted to the Marines, as it has every day for years. In just a few minutes, he would finally enlist.
As a little boy, he fought imaginary battles in back yards and playgrounds. Later, as a teenager, he longed for the adrenaline rush, the thrill of serving his country. This was his ticket out of Haltom City, his shot at exploring the world.
When he was 6 or 7, Cort started begging for his dad's Vietnam stories at bedtime. It was the only way he would agree to sleep.
So Jim regaled his little boy with G-rated war tales. The buddies he made in the middle of that thick, pitch-black jungle far away from tiny Dublin, Texas. The time he was shot on his way to R&R. The hellish three months spent recovering at a hospital in Japan, fighting a nasty infection that threatened to steal his leg. How, in the end, war changed him .
*
The men in uniform tapped their feet and made small talk. It was a Thursday, early April.
At 4 p.m. sharp, Cort walked into the Marine recruiting office, trailing his parents. He wore bluejeans, tennis shoes and a black T-shirt with a Marines logo splashed across the back.
A ball cap shaded his blue eyes. Tall and rail-thin, he looked too young to be here.
Sgt. Christopher Simms shook his hand, then directed Cort to the pull-up bar in the back of the office.
"In front of God and everybody, show us what you can do," he said. "Give me 10."
The tattooed sergeant counted, his voice booming. One. Two. Three.
Cort gave him 10, and then struggled to do one more. "That's all I've got," he said, dropping from the bar.
Flushed, he sat at the table with his mom and dad, who fidgeted, clasped and unclasped their hands.
"You guys ready for this?" Sgt. Simms asked, eyebrows raised.
Is a parent ever ready? Just shy of 17, Cort is their baby. He hasn't flown on an airplane since he was 2; he's never done laundry, reviewed a bank statement, rented an apartment.
What if he gets sent to Afghanistan? Iraq?
Jim and Geneva pushed those questions out of their minds. A promise was a promise.
Months earlier, they told Cort that if he graduated early from high school, he could join the Marines. At 17, a kid needs a parent's signature to join the military.
"At least he has a dream," his dad often says. "So many kids today have no direction. We're lucky."
They forced timid smiles and nodded at Sgt. Simms. Reaching across his desk, he handed them paper after paper. With a black pen, Cort and his parents signed each document.
The whole thing took 10 minutes. Ten minutes to let your son go.
Afterward, they drove to Marble Slab Creamery to celebrate, and Cort devoured a big bowl of vanilla ice cream with gummy bears.
In 38 days, he would ship out.
*
School always bored Cort.
When he was younger, he preferred playing pranks and getting a laugh. Sometimes, he would crouch by the dog's food bowl, pop a piece of dog food into his mouth like popcorn, then feed the dog a piece.
"You don't get much goofier than that," his brother, Arthur Queen, says.
Once, in the seventh grade, a kid dared him to scale a row of lockers for $5. Cort agreed, and then the lockers came crashing down on top of him.
Not long after that, his parents enrolled him in a small Christian school, where the principal paddled misbehaving students. In four years, Cort estimates, he got about 600 swats.
One day, barely 15 years old, Cort strolled into the Marine recruiting office with his friend Justin Stamps. The two boys had met at school a couple years earlier and were inseparable. They would dress up in camouflage and belly crawl through shrubs, spying on strangers. They played video games and paintball and shared books about the military.
"It's been my dream forever," Cort told Sgt. Simms that afternoon. "As soon as I'm old enough, I want to join."
Sgt. Simms cautioned them. "Look around. Check out the other branches of the military. Make sure you want the Marines."
Cort promised he would look into it, but he had no doubts. Marines saw action and adventure. They dove into the middle of danger. They were tough and savvy and strong.
Forget high school and homework. Cort belonged in the Marines .
*
Midnight came and went. Then 1, and 1:30.
One week after he enlisted in the Marines, Cort spent the night at a hotel in Irving. The next morning, a bus would drive him and the other recruits to Dallas, where they would take a three-hour exam, undergo a physical, and, finally, be sworn in.
His roommate planned to ship out for the Army the next morning and wanted to stay up all night talking and watching Spider-Man. Cort did not.
Finally, around 2, he drifted to sleep. The hotel's wakeup call jolted him out of bed at 3:30. Cort wasn't hungry, but he forced down eggs and bacon. Cort is about 6-2, and his weight hovers around 140.
"You're about 1 pound over the minimum," Sgt. Simms had told him a couple days earlier. "You need to eat, eat, eat."
At 5 in the morning, Cort started on the 10-part test: logic problems, word comprehension questions, math equations. He passed the exam, but never bothered to ask his score.
Next was the physical, and the eye test. The Breathalyzer. A urine sample. Stretch exercises in nothing but your skivvies.
A grim-faced nurse drew his blood. She jerked the needle out of his arm, but Cort didn't flinch.
Walking away, he scrunched his nose. "That actually really hurt."
At the end of the day, he and six other recruits gathered in a red-carpeted room. A Marine stood on the podium, and Cort raised his right hand and swore to defend and protect the United States of America.
It was his 17th birthday .
*
When he got home that night, Cort's mom asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday.
By sleeping, he told her.
Later that night, she asked again. Nothing, he replied. Before she went to work the next morning, she wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table.
"Cortland," the note began. "I am your mother, and it's my instinct to protect you for as long as I can. It went against my instinct to sign those papers. I did because I know it's what you want.
"But you have to let me celebrate your birthday. This is your last birthday as a kid, in this house."
That night, they grilled hamburgers, sang Happy Birthday and ate store-bought chocolate cake .
*
In the beginning, Geneva threatened to not sign Cort's enlistment papers. She had hoped he would go to college and get a job nearby.
Cort will always be her baby. She had him when she was 39, 15 years after her first child and nine years after her second.
"We're more like his grandparents than his parents," she often jokes.
Lately, she catches herself studying him when he's not looking. His back has gotten so broad, and his arms are muscular. He's a good foot taller than she is.
Other military moms have told her that when you see your child at basic training graduation, you barely recognize him or her. They look older, more mature, like a different person. How strange, she thinks.
Geneva let Cort join because it was the right thing to do. Who was she to stand in the way of his dreams?
But that doesn't mean it's easy.
On a Tuesday night in mid-April, Geneva and Cort were watching The Unit, a CBS television drama about a special-forces unit. During the episode, the crew was ambushed in the Middle East.
Geneva got up and walked out of the living room. She didn't want her son to see her cry .
*
Cort's empty bedroom will be tough, Jim says.
Should they leave the door open or closed? Should they go in and sit on the bed? Or pretend the room doesn't exist?
Jim has been on the other side of this. In 1966, during the Vietnam War, he left his home for Army basic training.
Every night, his mom and dad watched the war on their TV in Texas and fretted. Jim didn't understand the fuss. It was just boot camp, he told them.
Forty years later, he gets it. He remembers how his relationship with his parents changed after basic training.
"Not better. Not worse. Just different," he says.
Jim and Cort have always been close. For years, they hunted and camped and hiked in New Mexico.
When Cort was in the third grade, his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Without thinking, Cort replied, "Vice president of Willbanks Metals."
Just like his dad.
Cort's bedroom is full of his dad's old Vietnam mementos. A Purple Heart. Medals and stripes. An old Army hat.
A drawing Cort made years ago still hangs in Jim's office at Willbanks Metals, a manufacturing plant in north Fort Worth.
The picture shows two people - a tall guy and a little guy. Father and son, standing side by side, wearing big grins.
Across the top, in a child's writing, it says "I Love Dad."
Jim held the drawing up and smiled sadly.
"It's a funny thing," he said, "being so proud of him and so worried at the same time. "
*
Two weeks before Cort was scheduled to leave for boot camp in San Diego, he had a long list of errands.
Sell his Jeep. Buy a new car. Get in better shape. Buy an address book. Head to the lake for a long weekend with his family. Say goodbye.
Sgt. Simms called one morning to ask for a favor.
May 22 was packed with other recruits. Would he consider shipping out one week early?
That meant leaving home on May 14, Mother's Day. That night, he and the other recruits would stay at a hotel. The next day, May 15, Cort would fly out.
"Sure," he said. "That'll be fine."
After hanging up, he nervously dialed his mom's phone number .
*
Cort doesn't keep up with the war in Iraq much these days. He did in the beginning, but now it's all car bombs and kidnappings.
"Sneak attacks," he says.
He has no idea if or when he'll get sent overseas. But when it's time, he says, he'll be ready.
He hopes to make the Marines a career. Maybe become a sniper. After three months of basic training, he'll probably head to the East Coast for infantry training. And after that, who knows.
Death rarely crosses his mind.
Cort plays an Xbox game where you walk around trying to shoot the bad guys. When you kill someone, the screen goes fuzzy and the dead guy vanishes.
In some ways, Jim says, the game is eerily realistic.
"But in real life, no one disappears. They just lay there, pleading with their eyes, taking their last few breaths," he says. "It's something you never forget."
Jim wonders if Cort realizes the finality of death.
One day not long ago, Cort was talking to his friend Justin, who graduated from basic training a couple months ago.
"You know," Justin said, "it'll be a miracle if we're both alive when we're 35."
"Yeah," Cort said. "You're probably right."
Later, he thought back to that conversation.
"If I die, at least I would be doing what I love," Cort said. "What better way to go than defending your country? "
*
On the Saturday before he left, his parents threw a farewell cookout. Cars lined the street and four small American flags flew in the front yard.
A friend brought a chocolate cake with white frosting. In cursive writing, the cake said, "The Few. The Proud. Cortland."
Before eating, everyone bowed their heads and prayed: "Father," Jim said, "I ask for your blessing today for Cort as he prepares to enter a different phase of his life, a very important phase."
Geneva still couldn't believe her son was leaving a week early. When he first told her, she said no. Absolutely not. May 22 was circled on a calendar and burned into her mind.
Eventually, she relented. "It was the right thing to do," she said.
That evening, everyone talked and laughed and ate fajitas. Cort opened letters and gifts. David Friesen, his dad's co-worker, gave him a U.S. Marines knife.
"Awesome," Cort said.
"Good luck trying to get that on the plane," Friesen joked.
After a few hours, the crowd thinned out. Cort, his brother and a few friends stayed up all night, talking and telling stories.
On his last night at home, he didn't want to waste time sleeping .
*
It was time to say goodbye.
Nerves finally struck. Cort couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep.
In just a few hours, he would arrive at boot camp in California. For the next three months, drill instructors would be the closest thing to parents. No cell phone or e-mail. No TV or Xbox or sleeping in until noon.
Letter-writing would become his lifeline. His parents promised to write every day.
Flight 1961 to San Diego was scheduled to leave at 4:42 p.m. Monday. His family - mom, dad, sister Evie Force and niece Caroline Force - met him at the airport a couple hours beforehand.
Cort's stomach flipped and turned uneasily. His parents persuaded him to grab a hamburger from the airport Wendy's. No one knew when he would eat next.
Cort had packed almost nothing. The T-shirt and black warm-up pants he was wearing. His contacts, Social Security card, driver's license and $20.
Military moms had warned his parents that they probably wouldn't hear from Cort for the first three weeks. Three weeks. One day would have felt strange.
About 4:15, the boarding call for Flight 1961 came over the loudspeaker.
Cort just wanted to board the plane and sleep. He took a deep breath, looked around Terminal C and stepped forward.
"Come back here," his mom said. She wrapped her arms tightly around her son.
Jim and Cort stood awkwardly in front of each other. Jim pulled him in for a hug, then they shook hands.
"Good luck," he told him.
Slowly, deliberately, Cort treaded toward the check-in counter and handed the attendant his boarding pass. Jim and Geneva watched their son walk through the gate.
On the boarding ramp, he turned back only once. He saw his parents amid a crowd of people, still standing, still watching.
Then Cort smiled, flashed a goofy thumbs-up and waved goodbye.
Sarah Bahari, (817) 685-3863
sbahari@star-telegram.com
Ellie