Mary Tillman talks about emotional pain as family struggled to learn the truth
By Marty Cheek
Pat Tillman was the Arizona Cardinals football player who gave up his professional career to enlist in the U.S. Army in 2002. About 200 Morgan Hill Rotary Club members and their guests learned firsthand from his mother Mary Tillman about the emotional pain her family went through trying to discover the truth of how Pat died by “friendly fire” April 22, 2004 while serving in Afghanistan. She also described the family’s frustration dealing with political and military leaders in the resulting cover-up.
On July 10, Rotary Club President Brad Ledwith introduced Tillman by reading from an email he sent her nine months ago inviting her to speak to Morgan Hill Rotarians. “I admire your son’s courage to enlist. And I admire your will and determination to get to the truth,” he read out loud to the audience. “I’m the father of four children, and I can’t imagine losing one of them and then having the government lie to me about their deaths. Our motto in Rotary is the four-way test: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned? Had our government followed these simple tests, maybe you would have received the answers to your questions.”
Tillman began her talk by emphasizing that even though some people believe her family’s quest about their son’s death is an attack on the military, the family is very patriotic of American values and United States military traditions.
“We’re not attacking the military as an institution,” she said. “But we’re attacking the people in the military who don’t behave honorably, and that’s why I think Pat’s story is important.”
At the time Pat was killed, five young men who grew up in a 25-mile radius of the Tillman’s home in San Jose’s Almaden Valley were also killed by fratricide, Tillman said. Their families were all also lied to by military officials, she said.
“I find it really interesting when people say that, ‘Those fratricides, they happen few and far between,’” she said. “But that’s really not true. We also know that fratricide does happen.”
One Rotary Club member asked Tillman if she thought her son was a victim of homicide.
“I do think he was murdered. And I think that more now than I did back then,” she said. “And I think it’s because he was not going to be of any good purpose to them (the military officials) because they did try to utilize him for propaganda purposes before he was killed. I think they kind of got wind of the fact that he was not happy with the course of the war in Iraq. He didn’t think we should have gone there in the first place. I think they worried that he might be a problem. And I think things were going awry in Iraq in 2004, and I think it’s possible for them to take him out and use him for their own purposes. That’s a horrible, outrageous thing for me to think, but if you have all the information that I do on his death… anyone who reads it thinks he was murdered.”
Tillman said that Americans who join the military “lose their voice” which makes it hard for them to end poor treatment, including sexual abuse. All Americans have an obligation to speak up for members of all military branches to make sure the government treats them fairly, she said.
“I love this country,” Tillman said. “And I think we have a responsibility to get it turned around because I think it’s lost its way. That’s my message when I speak about this.”
