Unique eulogy

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 5/5/04 at 10:51pm

Wow. I came across this in a news article about the football player turned soldier who was recently killed in Afghanistan. Talk about maximum impact at a funeral:

[Pat] Tillman's youngest brother, Richard, dressed in a white T-shirt and black jeans, shouted several obscenities in his short eulogy and told a stunned crowd that Tillman “didn't believe in God. He's just dead.”


Funeral

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/6/04 at 12:20am

It seems you only saw an edited transcript. Here's what Tillman's brother really said:

"Pat isn't with God,'' he said. "He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.''

There's also another really interesting tidbit that didn't seem to make the national news:

:::
His brother-in-law and close friend, Alex Garwood, described how Tillman handled his duties when he became godfather to Garwood's son. He came to the ceremony dressed as a woman. Not as a religious commentary. He was doing a balancing act.

"We had two godfathers, no godmother,'' Garwood explained. And what NFL player turned Army Ranger wouldn't don drag to make that math work?
:::

Can the US handle the truth about its latest hero or is this what the Sinclair group was talking about with the trouble of giving the war dead names, and lives?




Challenge Yourself, America

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 5/6/04 at 12:44am

Someone had e-mailed the transcript that you quoted to me, but I had no luck finding the link, so I settled for the watered-down version. The actual quote is pretty intense. Must have been a hell of a moment at the funeral, eh?

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 5/6/04 at 10:25am

speaking as one who's buried two brothers and been to way too many funerals for friends i can say with a great deal of certainty that the things that a brother says at the funeral or memorial service of a brother (especially when the death comes too early and as a surprise) can reflect many things, but the most common one is a fierce anger that cannot be controlled and is most often directionless. the thing that really drives you nuts is people who didn't know your brother and who don't know you coming up and offering their unsought views about how your brother is this that or the other thing. i don't know tillman's brother, but i would go out on a limb and say that he was a teensy bit sick of strangers making proclamations about someone they didn't know.

i thought the kimono story was priceless as was his pride in his unibrow.