Brian Bradshaw: 'A Soldier's Worthy Life, Overlooked' [bumped]

*Updated and bumped. Michelle Malkin suggests we forget MJ and meet this hero. I second that with this post from yesterday. Brian Bradshaw was killed on the day Jackson died.

***

Our perverse celebrity-sick culture honors with its attention the twisted and bizarre over the "thoroughly decent," self-sacrificing, and heroic.

A letter to the Washington Post:

A Soldier's Worthy Life, Overlooked

Sunday, July 5, 2009

My nephew, Brian Bradshaw, was killed by an explosive device in Afghanistan on June 25, the same day that Michael Jackson died. Mr. Jackson received days of wall-to-wall coverage in the media. Where was the coverage of my nephew or the other soldiers who died that week? There were several of them, and our family crossed paths with the family of another fallen soldier at Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies come "home." Only the media in Brian's hometown and where he was stationed before his deployment covered his death.

I remember Brian as a toddler wandering around in cowboy boots and hat, not seeing the need for any other clothing. He grew into a thoroughly decent person with a wry sense of humor. He loved wolves and history. Most Christmases, I gave him a biography or some analysis of the Civil War. He read such things for pleasure.

He had old-fashioned values and believed that military service was patriotic and that actions counted more than talk. He wasn't much for talking, although he could communicate volumes with a raised eyebrow.

He was a search-and-rescue volunteer, an altar boy, a camp counselor. He carried the hopes and dreams of his parents willingly on his shoulders. What more than that did Michael Jackson do or represent that earned him memorial "shrines," while this soldier's death goes unheralded?

It makes me want to scream.

MARTHA GILLIS

Springfield

h/t: Pundit

An excerpt from the story in Bradshaw's local paper:

“We are proud beyond belief,” his father said Friday, “(but) we really didn’t encourage him very much either.”

A graduate of Visitation Catholic School and Bellarmine Preparatory School, Bradshaw grew up in Steilacoom. In high school he was member of Pierce County Search and Rescue and was a summer counselor at Camp Don Bosco, a Catholic Youth Organization camp in Carnation, where he once was a young camper.

Paul Bradshaw said his son had “a great sense of humor” and described him as “very athletic, an outdoors and very action-oriented person. He bicycled, was a backcountry skier and climbed mountains.” He knew Crystal Mountain Ski Area and Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia very well.

“But his favorite place (to ski) was Mount Baker,” Paul Bradshaw said.

Paul Bradshaw said he didn’t know if his son planned on making the Army a career though he had talked about it.

“He also talked about teaching history,” he said. “He had started taking helicopters for backcountry skiing and talked about wanting to be a guide for backcountry skiing.”

He was a talented young man living a full, healthy life. He could have done many things other than enlist in the army. But he chose to risk his life in order to improve the lives of strangers from foreign cultures halfway around the world.

Oremus.

*Update: picked up by Newsbusters.

Related post here (scroll down to end).

Comments welcome.

Cross-posted in the Green Room.

Most recent posts here.