Tillman Is Remembered Fondly

Family and Friends Gather for National Hero's Poignant Memorial Service

SAN JOSE, May 3 -- The family and friends of Pat Tillman, most of whom remained respectfully silent after the former Arizona Cardinals safety was killed last month while fighting in Afghanistan, came together Monday for a public memorial service that was at once moving, humorous, and, at times, sweetly profane.

For some 2 and 1/2 hours, a collection of politicians, soldiers, professional football players, childhood friends, coaches and close relatives walked to a podium beneath a broiling sun at the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden to honor Tillman, who was 27 and had walked away from a $3.6 million contract extension offered by the Cardinals to volunteer for the U.S. Army.

The afternoon's final speaker was Tillman's father, Patrick Tillman Sr., a local attorney. "I'm last, and I miss my son," he told the crowd of approximately 3,000. "It's only been a week and it ain't getting any better." Tillman, his voice breaking, said he wanted to leave his sunglasses on "because it makes me feel like you can't see me."

He added: "I don't know a lot about what happened to Pat, and a lot of the details I really don't care about. I'll find out what the stuff is later on, but I know enough to know that Pat was going at it the way he was always going at it, the way he enjoyed it."

The service, held in the town where Tillman grew up, was the only public event held by his family. Through spokesmen, the family had said it did not want Tillman singled out over other soldiers who have died during the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The service was a memorial to a self-effacing man who by all accounts shunned pretense and glitter, but nonetheless became a national hero. Several speakers remarked that Tillman, a Ranger, himself would have wondered why it was necessary. His younger brother, Spc. Kevin Tillman, a minor league second baseman with the Cleveland Indians who left professional baseball to fight with his brother, attended but did not speak.

Tillman's youngest brother, Richard, an aspiring comedian, took the podium wearing jeans and a T-shirt and holding a pint of Guinness beer. "I didn't write [anything], because I'm not a writer," he said. He read "Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep," a 1932 poem by Mary K. Frye:

Do not stand at my grave and cry

I am not there,

I did not die.

After he finished, Tillman, the partially quaffed beer still in his hand, jumped down from the stage to take his seat with his family.

"For all of us here in the front row, this [expletive] sucks!" said Alex Garwood, Tillman's brother-in-law. "And what sucks is we lost Pat."