Plane crashed in the morning and buildings fell, Jeremy Staat was tired of football. A few days earlier he had been carved by a team of Seattle Seahawks he was sure he would do and politics in the game discouraged. He was sitting alone in his Scottsdale, Arizona home, the phone is, nobody in the NFL called a defensive end that only three years ago was a second round pick to the Pittsburgh Steelers. He felt empty and lost.
Rage made him September 11, 2001, when he saw on television, "a surreal day," as he later said. "For me it was a huge hit," he recalls. "It was like be taken with your own gun. "
And blurred in the mist of the worst morning, he suddenly knew what he would do: "I can be a true warrior," he said. "I can fight for my country." He went to war. It would run to the person who did this. never happen again. He called his agent, Frank Bauer, and ordered him to tell any team that might be called, he was not interested in the NFL more. It would hunt down bin Laden.
That is until his friend called Pat Tillman.
"What are you doing, stupid?" Static recalls Tillman says. Staat was only a couple of short games to earn pension benefits, and Tillman, told him that he needed them.
This surprised Tillman static, because he knew that terrible day as much as he did. But Tillman has always been a sensible way to him. Be angry, yes, if you must fight, though for first place in your life. So static back to pursue a career in football and a few months later, Tillman - insure your future - went to war.
It is ironic now to see how it all unfolded. Staat finished in the army, enlisting as a sailor in 2006 to less than two years after Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Staat went to Iraq and sat in a turret in nine months, returned to his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., and became an activist for veterans and soldiers rights.
"And 'promoter and agitator," his mother, Janet Staat-Goedhart said.
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There was a time Staat thought he would love the football forever. It was at Arizona State, where he bulldozed through the Pac-10 offenses on the ground and roared through life with his friend and brother Kevin Tillman Tillman, out of it. They became best friends and partners in Hijinks and life, and those in mid-1990 days seemed so perfect.
Staat former teammates said the NFL would not give the same feeling of camaraderie as college football. He said he would not love the game as he did at that time. But I never understood these feelings, until he went to the Steelers and found himself in what he perceived as a war between coach Bill Cowher and team vice president Tom Donahoe, the man who wrote it. Staat felt Cowher did not think was good for the team's defensive system and never have wanted. In 2001 he was released. Staat rejected better offers to sign with the Seahawks, because it seemed a sure thing, and Seattle was closer to home. When the Seahawks cut a couple of days before the start of the 2001 season, he hated the game.
Tillman when he said he left football, he finished around the edges of the NFL. Opportunities came and then went out. Oakland offensive lineman was looking for him, but released before he could play. He was almost ready to give up, when the St. Louis Rams signed him in 2003 to meet the injured players. He played two games, has met its obligation to understand the benefits and walked away. He half-heartedly a good season in Los Angeles Avengers Arena League and because he felt the money was good, then gave the game forever.
It was the month of April that Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Despairing of Tillman's death and tired of football, Staat took a job in a pharmacy and began working aggressively to pay the excess weight he had put his 6 foot 6 230 pounds the body to play football. On the back of his mind, he knew he did it to join the army, making himself ready for basic training. He went through a spiritual transformation.
At one point he asked, "How I can serve God when they can not serve man?" In that moment I knew I was joining the army.
The last thing Janet Staat-Goedhart wanted her son to war. Jeremy's father fought in Vietnam, and was absent all those days were full of terror, and expect a knock on the door to tell her that her husband was dead. Yet, his son has always been fascinated by the military, but it never seemed a serious possibility until the death of Tillman. The two were so close, and he also knew Tillman well. And when Jeremy stops the Arena League and started training, he knew what was coming.
"I think it was always in mind," she said. "Pat and Kevin just fill the holes for him."
Yet when Jeremy told me that it would be a Marine, was "physically sick."
These are strange things in the mind of the mother, when he tells her child can go to war. For some reason, he liked to think of Ralph Lauren is back to his room at home in Arizona. They had so little, when he was growing and one of the few luxuries she allowed herself to sign the contract for furnishing the NFL. "How can you leave it like beautiful pieces of furniture to sleep in the sand in Iraq?" He had to wonder.
Janet remembers that night in San Francisco, where Jeremy was cut by Raiders, and they were together with Bauer and Tillman. It was just after Tillman had completed his first tour of duty. It was asked, now that he had made a turn if he had to return to football.
"No," said Tillman. "I made a commitment. I have to take this trip."
Everyone at the table in silence.
"I thought," This is really an effort, "she said.
Iraq was really hard, but it was not as bad as expected Staat. He was stationed in Haditha, there had been a hot spot earlier in the war, but was relatively calm when he arrived. What changed his impression of the war. In a way, it should be stirred for Iraq in a frenzy of hatred for Americans. He figured that everyone hates them and the nights were filled with Iraqis he met gunfire.Instead people tired of war and desperate for a normal life. In his nine months sitting in the gun tower, became his most vivid memories of children running through the streets hoping for handfuls of candy by American soldiers or a pencil or a laptop, or have was really lucky, a soccer ball.
Asked what he learned more in Iraq, Staat stops and says. "I learned humility and patience to life"
I still can hear the laughter of children as they approached the soldiers. A war is raging, life was hard, the power came and went, but the children laughed. Laughter does not need a translator. Laughter does not need a gun or bullet-proof bunker. Laughter was simple.
"In order for them to laugh, because we as human beings - has been incredible," he says.
He was back for another tour. In fact, he was on the line, roll up your sleeves and waiting for the battery of vaccinations before deployment, when his heart began to run. He felt sick. His hands spasm uncontrollably. He looked up and said, "Man, I think I have a heart attack." They rushed him to a doctor he was hooked to an EKG and determined he had an abnormal heart rhythm.
The doctors said they believed the stress of years building his big body to play football only to be dismantled in the army combined with the months leading up to the turret of his heart. It is not so sure, but heart problems associated with hip and lower back injury led to a medical discharge.
It was 2007 and I had no idea what was going to do next. His time in the Navy left in the conflict: the war that he fought was not going to fight. Why were we there? The government's attempt to hide the fact that Tillman died by friendly fire in anger made him the sad condition of the equipment for soldiers in Iraq. On the other hand, the anger I felt 11 September 2001, remained. He returned to Arizona, graduated, then went back to Bakersfield.
He felt the need to build something for the veterans, so he started by Jeremy Staat Foundation and began to raise funds for the wall in honor of all the residents of Kern County who fought in wars. He said he would be called the "Great Wall of value." Suddenly, his life was full of projects - some designed to get tickets to sporting events for veterans, and to reward others wounded in battle. He organized a bike ride next February, which goes to the wall in Bakersfield and Valor Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington.
The work makes him happy. For the first time in over a decade, its purpose, which he loves.
It 'amazing how his life changed that morning a horrible, which came just days after the lowest point of his football career.
"For me, 9 / 11 is this generation's Pearl Harbor," he says. "I was stationed in Hawaii, so I went many times. I can not understand just hanging out in Hawaii, these large vessels, when all hell breaks loose. It 's like 11, you had all these people only going to work and get their coffee at Starbucks and the difficulty to find parking and then boom, you're gone.''
Football is a distant memory.
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