Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters (16 page)

We started compromising more. Together we worked out
never-before-considered options for making army life more tolerable for her. She missed her family terribly. And the most meaningful solution was also the easiest—routine annual visits to Minnesota just for her.

In 2000, we both may have been willing to compromise and sacrifice for each other, but it was Kristin who actually did it. It’s too cliché to say hers was an act I would never forget and always appreciate. Sooner or later, I knew I would have an opportunity to demonstrate my love and commitment to her.

That opportunity came unexpectedly several years later when her dad’s prostate cancer returned with a vengeance. Her selfless actions during our civil war help explain mine when I resigned my active duty commission without hesitation in 2009 so we could be near him.

I traded in every ounce of influence I had to get us home to Minnesota. When that failed, I reached out to General Petraeus for help. His personal note to a fellow general officer ended, “The only remaining step is to have the open requisition validated by your command—a step I hope you can take, as it will help both that program and a great officer and his family.”

I had orders for the University of Minnesota ROTC program as an executive officer within twelve hours. I had never seen anything move that fast in the army. I swelled with pride and felt a lump in my throat as I called Kristin over to the computer. I watched her eyes scan the email and saw the reality sink in. Then I spoke as if I were opening a surprise anniversary gift.

“Honey,” I said, “I’m taking you home.” We shared a long, tearful hug.

Each of you boys, in your own way, has come to me and asked why Kristin and I fight the way we do. In each case, there is an assumed question about how it is that two people can fight so passionately and still claim to love one another
.

I propose to you that it is virtually impossible to find or maintain a
relationship that won’t come with fights, and that having a good, loving marriage is not about avoiding fights—it’s about fighting fair and making up
.

The same questions have been asked about how we get along when we have such pronounced differences in taste. There’s lots of debate on this one in academic circles, but not in my mind. I would never choose the music your mom listens to, but because I love her I think of her when I hear a song I know she likes. I’ve never had a problem liking her music in that context—or your music, for that matter. And I didn’t have to stop being me to do it
.

Finally, all my adult life, I have struggled with making sure I provided the right kind of balance between family and work. I never did know if I got it right, but I did stick to a guiding principle: working hard is critical to the long-term stability of the family, so do it. But when you’re home, be home
.

I’ve learned that more time with family is not always better time with family. Quality, reliability, and engagement are the things you all seemed to appreciate the most
.

Me too
.

 … 
TO SEEK A TEMPER OF THE WILL, A QUALITY OF THE IMAGINATION, AND TO EXERCISE A TEMPERAMENTAL PREDOMINANCE OF COURAGE OVER TIMIDITY.

December 2003

MARCH-SEPTEMBER 2011

Going back to work after recovering from surgery was exhilarating for me, but it was a bit problematic for the army. Soldiers with terminal cancer don’t go back to work. They are thanked for their service and medically retired. And as a career lieutenant colonel, I stood ready to collect a generous pension, so that option made logical sense. Except to me.

Although senior leaders of the Minnesota National Guard found my desire to work to be at least as puzzling as it was inspiring, they agreed to support me by offering me a temporary full-time assignment. The arrangement would harness my energy while ensuring minimum disruption to them if my health failed to meet my optimism.

Temper of the will and a quality of the imagination were now required of both me and the army, because this had never been done before.

My tasks weren’t busywork. They included reviewing the strategic planning and performance improvements processes for the Minnesota National Guard, as well as assuming a leading role in improving our efforts with suicide prevention—a challenge that unfortunately put Minnesota, with its particularly high incidence of soldier suicide, in a national spotlight.

Up
.

This was the kind of vital assignment I’d wanted when I first came into the organization, and I threw myself into it so thoroughly that the job was eventually made permanent, and I
was promoted to the position of director of strategic communication.

Down
.

My health had wavered frequently in the weeks leading into March—usually two or three weeks of feeling great, followed by three days of illness with the knockdown power of the worst flu you ever had.

Either the surgery or the cancer growth was causing bile to back up inside my liver and leach into my body, which led to sepsis, a deadly infection I would come to know intimately: thirty to sixty minutes of violent, shaking chills; vomiting; white stool; orange urine; head-to-toe itching and body aches; burning, yellow eyes and skin; and a migraine-like headache.

This form of sepsis carries a 60 percent mortality rate, which always seemed accurate, because I truly wondered if I was going to survive the night each time it happened—at least thirty times in two years.

Up
.

To fix the sepsis problem, radiologists inserted a catheter through my ribs, across my liver, and straight down through the bile duct (a tube that connects the liver to the body). One end of the catheter drains into my intestine; the other end is connected to a drainage bag that hangs from the space between my ribs. In essence, they installed a drain, so the liver would never again back up like a clogged sink.

Down
.

Starting in March, each successive CT scan showed the cancer was still growing, which indicated a failing Gleevec chemo response. Still, Gleevec is the most promising drug on the market for GIST patients, so we all anxiously and patiently waited from March until August before concluding that it had failed.

The doctors followed the standard protocol of doubling the dose.

Up and down
.

In August, after four months without a major bout of sepsis, the doctors decided to remove the catheter in my liver in the hopes my damaged bile duct had healed.

Also, a CT scan showed the double dose of Gleevec was working extremely well, which was a welcome gift on the one-year “cancerversary” of my diagnosis.

But in September, just a few weeks later, I experienced a bout of sepsis serious enough to put me in the hospital. The scar tissue on the bile duct was still blocking the flow of bile, so the catheter had to go back into my liver—and hasn’t come out since.

Worse, Buford started acting up; an abscess the size of a silver dollar formed right on the incision line and deep in the abdominal muscle, which affected everything I did. I could still get around and push through a day of work, but the pain was almost unbearable for a week until the antibiotics kicked in.

Somebody stop this ride
, I thought.
I want to get off
.

Amidst all the ups, downs, and uncertainties of this six-month period in 2011, “you should write a book” became a common refrain from those who followed my online CaringBridge journal. I rejected the idea of writing a formal memoir, but the constant suggestion did convince me there might be some merit in sorting through twenty-two years of journal entries to organize my life experience for you boys.

*   *   *

When Samuel Ullman wrote the refrain in this chapter’s title some forty years prior to MacArthur’s speech, he was not speaking of leadership, patriotism, or duty. He was speaking of
youth
, which is also the title of his poem, excerpted here:

But if you’re going to die young when you’re old, you must first
be
young when you are young. And I was young.

I spent my last semester in college at Nicollet Public School as a student teacher for seventh through twelfth grades. To say I embraced it with a temperamental idealism would be an understatement. As a soon-to-be army lieutenant, I saw this as a real-world opportunity to practice what I had learned about leadership and management—and with teenagers, no less.

Things went reasonably well for most of the semester. Most of the kids seemed entertained by their temporary new monkey, and I really felt as if I were connecting. I taught with fire and passion. But one of the teachers warned me that my style was not sustainable.

“You’ll burn out,” she said. This comment came as no surprise to me, because her teaching style was about as interesting as wet paint.

Two weeks from graduation, all hell broke loose. I had just finished teaching a section on the American Civil War in my tenth-grade history class. I posed a question for the class: “The slaves are all free, so now what?”

One boy in the front row, a routine rabble-rouser, blurted out, “Kill the niggers.” The room froze, and I heard audible gasps from other students.

Without yelling, I ordered him with a wave of my finger,
“You get the hell out of my classroom,” I said. “Go down to the principal’s office, and tell him what you said to get kicked out of my class.”

Just then, another voice arose from the back of the room. “I don’t see what he said was so wrong.” It was a buddy who decided to support his embattled friend.

“Go on—go join your buddy, bigmouth,” I told him.

The principal, ironically nicknamed “Whitey,” told me to determine a punishment with his full support. After consulting with my host teacher, Brad Koenig, I settled on in-school suspension, under my supervision, which would require the sacrifice of my Saturday.

Two days later, I was called to the main office and told the district superintendent, Mr. John Booth, wanted to see me. His office was housed in our school, but I had never met the man.

As I approached his door, I noticed a woman I did not recognize sitting in front of his desk. Her face said “anxious” with a bullhorn. As I entered the room, I saw Mrs. Wet Paint standing next to the suspended boys, both of whom looked awfully confident.

“Come over here behind my desk by me, Mr. Weber,” Booth said calmly and with a forced smile.

I smelled an ambush. And I took note that Whitey was out of town.

“Mr. Weber,” Booth said warmly, “I’ve brought you in here to discuss what happened earlier this week in your class with these boys.” He introduced the anxious woman as one of the mothers, then explained that he invited Mrs. Wet Paint to help provide perspective.

His recap of events was notable in two ways: short on the details of the boys’ behavior and heavy-handed regarding my use of the word
hell
. He compared our behaviors as if they were cut from the same cloth, and then suggested I reconsider the suspensions.

“I don’t see how my behavior has anything to do with what these boys did,” I said, sounding desperate and pathetic.

“Well,” Booth replied, “this isn’t something we need the boys in here to discuss.” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand, saying in a fatherly tone, “You two head on back to class now. Your suspensions are revoked.”

My heart raced. I slowly moved from behind the desk. After a few moments of silence, I muttered, “I don’t … um … I don’t understand what just happened here.”

Mrs. Wet Paint spoke first with some backhanded comment about my teaching style, which Booth repeated like a parrot.

I glared at her. “What does my teaching style have to do with what those boys did?” But it was plain enough that I was outnumbered and outgunned, so I didn’t press the matter.

I left that office in a daze. I went to discuss with Koenig what had happened, but the conversation was short; the day was almost over and it was Friday.

Sadness and intimidation quickly turned into a steely resolve: I may have been a student teacher, but something was wrong here, and I was not going to take it lying down.

I undertook my own investigation that weekend and was shocked at what I found. Booth’s employment status as superintendent was probationary; he had an admitted history of alcohol abuse that included at least one DWI.

As in most school districts across the country, Booth served at the pleasure of the school board. And that anxious mother I met in Booth’s office was
president
of the school board.