Rory Fanning served in the Army Rangers in Afghanistan with Pat Tillman. Today, Rory is in Tennessee, on an east-to-west walk across the U.S., to raise money for the Pat Tillman Foundation, and to honor one of his heroes. You can follow Rory’s long walk at walkforpat.org.

Here is an excerpt from a recent blog on Rory’s site, taken from a radio interview he’d done along his walk, in which he’d been asked by the interviewer to tell a Pat Tillman story:

It was a Friday night and my class and I were on weekend leave from a military training session in Ft. Benning, GA. A cab dropped me off in downtown Columbus, a neighboring town. I was on my way to meet a few guys at Scruffy Murphy’s, an Irish Bar. I walked passed Fountain City Coffee, the local coffee house and noticed Pat and his brother Kevin chatting inside. We were in the same training class and I had met them both briefly before. I decided to walk in and say hi.

Pat had a book in his hand and was drinking coffee with his brother and one other guy. They were having a discussion on religion. They invited me to have a seat. We started talking about a wide variety of topics. I was immediately impressed by two things, one was how well he listened and two, how well read he was. Pat listened with a genuine interest in learning something new. Never did he act distracted or try to interrupt a point for his own. I also noticed that Pat could seamlessly weave in and out of topics and tie one to another. It was easy to see how extremely well read he was. I would learn from Kevin that he and his brother would read on any one of a wide range of topics and then write papers to exchange with each other.

After watching Pat’s dedicated and disciplined approach to the Ranger Handbook I asked him what he studied in school. He said he received his Masters in History and I said, “Let me guess you received straight A’s.” He nodded his head in the affirmative. I only met Pat a few months before his death and we had no more than a dozen conversations. But when I think of my time with him I remember someone who was dedicated to an uncompromising pursuit of truth, in both action and word.

In even this short anecdote, it’s easy to get a sense of Pat Tillman’s character. Not the role he played in a football or Army uniform, but the human being he was. Open minded. A listener. A reader. A connector of seemingly disparate ideas. Above all, he was a seeker of the truth and of the words and actions that brought those truths to life. This objective of bringing truth to life is at the very heart of improvisation, just as it’s at the heart of any worthy mission.

Tillman’s tragic death in the mountains of Afghanistan became, IMHO, emblematic of three harsh truths about the U.S. military strategy in the Middle East at that time:

First, that justice for 9/11 was to be had in those mountains. That’s where Bin Laden was, and Tillman was locking in. The man always had a nose for the ball. Tillman knew exactly where he was going, and exactly why he was there. This stood in marked contrast to the inconsistent, ill-conceived directions and motivations of the U. S. political leadership at the time.

Second, that the military, at the time of Tillman’s death, did not have its act together. Tillman, as most Americans know, was killed by friendly fire. Whatever combination of fear, confusion, mis-communication and bad judgment led to his death came from within. The group is responsible for the actions of the group.

Third, that the leadership was lying. Tillman’s family blew the whistle on the bogus stories about the circumstances of his death that were scripted and sold to the media by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team. The Tillman family, better than anyone, knew that the truths Pat and his fellow soldiers sought and fought for are not those scripted for them by others, be it the NFL or the U.S. Army. Pat Tillman’s truths were his own, and from everything Rory writes, and from what I know from reading about Pat Tillman, he was generous in sharing them with others.

Truth, as Rory Fanning reminds us in walkforpat.org, cannot be imposed on us, but is revealed to us along our own long walks. Truth is not the game, it is what we discover through the playing of the game.

Tags: Afghanistan, Bin Laden, Game, George Bush, Journey, military, Pat Tillman, Rory Fanning, Truth, Veterans Day, walkforpat, walkforpat.org

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Character, Games, Group Mind, Listening, Movement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.