In this war, not only the sons and daughters of the poor are enlisting.

[thedrifter]

Privileged to Serve
In this war, not only the sons and daughters of the poor are enlisting.

Friday, April 23, 2004 1:45 p.m. EDT

(Editor's note: This column appeared on July 12, 2002. Pat Tillman died in combat in Afghanistan yesterday.)

Maybe he was thinking Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Maybe it was visceral, not so much thought as felt, and acted upon. We don't know because he won't say, at least not in public. Which is itself unusual. Silence is the refuge of celebrities caught in scandal, not the usual response of those caught red-handed doing good.

All we know is that 25-year-old Pat Tillman, a rising pro football player (224 tackles in 2000 as a defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals, a team record) came back from his honeymoon seven weeks ago and told his coaches he would turn down a three-year, $3.6 million contract and instead join the U.S. Army. For a pay cut of roughly $3.54 million dollars over three years.

On Monday morning, Pat Tillman "came in like everyone else, on a bus from a processing station," according to a public information officer at Fort Benning, Ga., and received the outward signs of the leveling anonymity of the armed forces: a bad haircut, a good uniform and physical testing to see if he is up to the rigors of being a soldier. Soon he begins basic training. And whatever else happened this week--Wall Street news, speeches on the economy--nothing seems bigger, more important and more suggestive of change than what Pat Tillman did.

Those who know him say it's typical Tillman, a surprise decision based on his vision of what would be a good thing to do. When he was in college he sometimes climbed to the top of a stadium light tower to think and meditate. After his great 2000 season he was offered a $9 million, five-year contract with the St. Louis Rams and said thanks but no, he was happy with the Cardinals.

But it was clear to those who knew Mr. Tillman that after September 11 something changed. The attack on America had prompted a rethinking. Len Pasquarelli of ESPN reported last May that the "free-spirited but consummately disciplined" starting strong safety told friends and relatives that, in Mr. Pasquarelli's words, "his conscience would not allow him to tackle opposition fullbacks where there is still a bigger enemy that needs to be stopped in its tracks." Mr. Tillman's agent and friend Frank Bauer: "This is something he feels he has to do. For him, it's a mindset, a duty."





"I'm sorry, but he is not taking inquiries," said the spokeswoman at Fort Benning. She laughed when I pressed to speak to someone who might have seen Mr. Tillman or talked to him. Men entering basic training don't break for interviews, she said. Besides, "he has asked not to have any coverage. We've been respecting his wishes. And kinda hoping he'd change his mind." Mr. Tillman would, of course, be a mighty recruiting device. The Army might have enjoyed inviting television cameras to record his haircut, as they did with Elvis. But Mr. Tillman, the Fort Benning spokesman says, "wants to be anonymous like everyone else."
Right now he has 13 weeks of basic training ahead of him, then three weeks of Airborne School, and then, if he makes it, Ranger School, where only about a third of the candidates are accepted. "It's a long row," said the Fort Benning spokesman, who seemed to suggest it would be all right to call again around Christmas. Until then he'll be working hard trying to become what he wants to become.

Which I guess says it all.

Except for this. We are making a lot of Tillmans in America, and one wonders if this has been sufficiently noted. The other day friends, a conservative intellectual and his activist wife, sent a picture of their son Gabe, a proud and newly minted Marine. And there is Abe, son of a former high aide to Al Gore, who is a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy, flying SH-60 Seahawk helicopters. A network journalist and his wife, also friends, speak with anguished pride of their son, in harm's way as a full corporal in the Marines. The son of a noted historian has joined up; the son of a conservative columnist has just finished his hitch in the Marines; and the son of a bureau chief of a famous magazine was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army last month, on the day he graduated from Princeton.

As the Vietnam-era song said, "Something's happening here." And what it is may be exactly clear. Some very talented young men, and women, are joining the armed forces in order to help their country because, apparently, they love it. After what our society and culture have been through and become the past 30 years or so, you wouldn't be sure that we would still be making their kind, but we are. As for their spirit, Abe's mother reports, "Last New Year's, Abe and his roommate [another young officer] were home and the topic came up about how little they are paid [compared with] the kids who graduated from college at the same time they did and went into business.

"Without missing a beat the two of them said, 'Yeah--but we get to get shot at!' and raised their beer bottles. No resentment. No anger. Just pure . . . testosterone-laden bravado."





The Abes and Gabes join a long old line of elders dressed in green, blue, gray, white, gold and black. Pat Tillman joins a similar line, of stars who decided they had work to do, and must leave their careers to do it. They include, among others, the actors Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable and Tyrone Power in World War II; sports stars Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio in the same war; and quarterback Roger Staubach in Vietnam. It is good to see their style return, and be considered noble again.
And good to see what appears to be part of, or the beginning of, a change in armed forces volunteering. In the Vietnam era of my youth it was poor and working-class boys whom I saw drafted or eagerly volunteering. Now more and more I see the sons and daughters of the privileged joining up.

That is a bigger and better story than usually makes the front page. Markets rise and fall, politicians come and go, but that we still make Tillmans is headline news.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/column.../?id=110004997


Ellie

[thedrifter]

THE WORLD
War Isn't Their Kind of Game

Tillman's decision to serve is the exception today for athletes and celebrities, but it wasn't that way in World WarII and Korea.

By David Wharton, Times Staff Writer


Even people close to Pat Tillman, teammates who knew of his determination and patriotism, were startled when he left professional football to join the Army two years ago.

"To walk away from several million dollars and a life of relative ease, to put his neck on the line?" said Pete Kendall, who played with Tillman on the Arizona Cardinals. "You had to be surprised."

Military historians agree. They say Tillman's decision to join the elite Army Rangers recalls a bygone era when big-time athletes were willing — even eager — to serve.

His death in a firefight in Afghanistan on Thursday night also places him on a relatively short list of pro athletes killed in battle.

"What's so unusual about Tillman is not that he gave up so much money," said Richard H. Kohn, a professor of military history at the University of North Carolina. "It was that, at a time when neither the president nor anyone else was calling for mobilization or sacrifice, Tillman felt the call of his country."

For pro athletes, this type of sacrifice was far more common during World War II.

The list of baseball players who served reads like a Hall of Fame roster.

Ted Williams became a Marine pilot. Warren Spahn was decorated for combat at the Battle of the Bulge. Yogi Berra served as a gunner's mate on a boat during the invasion at Normandy.

They were joined by more than 600 men who played in the National Football League. Jack Lummus and Al Bozis, both with the New York Giants, were among 19 who died.

His legs blown off by a Japanese land mine at Iwo Jima, Lummus reportedly told medics: "Well, it looks like the Giants have lost a damn good end."

Lummus received the Congressional Medal of Honor, as did Detroit Lion end Maurice Britt, who lost his right arm.

It was a function of the times, said Gary Bloomfield, author of "Duty, Honor, Victory," a history of athletes in World War II. Leaders were calling for young men to mobilize and everyone — including actors such as Jimmy Stewart — responded.

"You saw similar things in the Korean War," Kohn said. "Williams went back into flying as a Marine pilot. This was typical."

The reverberations can still be felt — San Francisco Giant slugger Barry Bonds might not have surpassed Willie Mays in career home runs this season had Mays not spent two years of his prime in the military.

It was the Vietnam War that signaled a change.

A young heavyweight champion named Cassius Clay made headlines by resisting the draft. Later known as Muhammad Ali, he took his objection to the Supreme Court — while banned from the sport — and ultimately prevailed.

Others had their service deferred or found quiet ways to avoid battle. "You had a lot of professional athletes who managed to get slots in their local National Guard units," Kohn said.

Players going to war became the exception. Dallas Cowboy quarterback Roger Staubach served after graduating from the Naval Academy, his team shipping footballs to Vietnam so he could practice.

Only one active NFL player died.

Bob Kalsu, a lineman, was called up after his rookie season with the Buffalo Bills. Choosing not to defer, he was killed in 1970 when his artillery unit was pinned down by enemy fire on an isolated mountaintop.

Now, with no military draft, the chances were slim that a pro athlete — or any celebrity earning millions of dollars — would make such a commitment.

"Elvis Presley was my contemporary and can you imagine the most popular singer of a generation serving as an enlisted man?" asked Charles Moskos, a leading military sociologist at Northwestern University. "Can you imagine Eminem doing that today? That's the contrast."

The point was driven home for Tillman's former teammate Friday.

"A lot of times in football, the analogies with war are thrown around freely," Kendall said. "On a day like today, you see how hollow those ring."

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-...,4496694.story


Ellie