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TRIBUTES TO TILLMAN GROW CARDINALS WILL HONOR FALLEN PLAYER DURING TODAY'S GAME
September 19, 2004
By Scott Bordow, Tribune
LOS GATOS, Calif.
He pulls out a Purple Heart and shows it to his visitor. So many of the medals have come in the mail. Eight, he thinks. He can’t be sure. There’s a Bronze Star, too. A delicately folded U.S. flag. |
MEMORIALS: Items donated to the Pat Tillman Foundation reflect his football career as well as his involvement in the Army. TUE NAM TON, FOR THE TRIBUNE |
MEMORIALS: Items donated to the Pat Tillman Foundation reflect his football career as well as his involvement in the Army.
TUE NAM TON, FOR THE TRIBUNE
A quilt hand-made by students at an Oregon elementary school.
Garwood is the unpaid executive director of the Pat Tillman Foundation. Every couple of days, he checks the foundation’s post office box in nearby Almaden, Calif.
He never knows what he’ll find. Some people have written checks for the amount of $40.42. Tillman wore No. 42 at Arizona State University, No. 40 for the Arizona Cardinals.
Others send mementos — songs they’ve written and burned onto a CD; a football signed by kids at a reform school; an old, worn pair of Army boots.
The letters keep coming.
"There’s a couple of drug addicts in Britain whose families have written in to say they’re using Pat’s example to try to keep their sons clean,"
Garwood said.
Tillman died April 11 in a fire fight in Afghanistan. The Cardinals will honor him before and during halftime of their game today against the New England Patriots at Sun Devil Stadium.
Every fan will receive a No.
40 lapel pin, a video tribute will be shown, and the Cardinals will retire Tillman’s jersey and present it to his family.