Musings from Left Field

Ryan on his VMI Grad­u­a­tion Day

5 Years ago today the world changed.  My dear friend, Ryan Doltz, was killed by a remotely det­o­nated impro­vised explo­sive device while run­ning a patrol in Bagh­dad, Iraq.

Most peo­ple will hear this and file it under “so sad, just another sense­less death.” But before you do, you must know this. Ryan had a ticket out before he ever stepped foot on Iraqi soil. Yet he fought to get on that plane.

Ryan broke BOTH HEELS dur­ing a train­ing exer­cise while prepar­ing for deploy­ment with his New Jer­sey Guard unit.  No one thought he would ever see a war zone after that. He was con­fined to a wheel­chair and told his recov­ery would take at min­i­mum of 6 months.

I naively took a sigh of relief when I heard that he was hurt state­side. When you have good friends who skirt mas­sacre for a liv­ing, you rejoice when they get dysen­tery, break a leg in train­ing, or find them­selves with weird skin infec­tions on the bat­tle­field. You can sleep at night when they are in infir­maries. (*sorry guys*)

He loved being in those big machines!

But he would have none of that. From his view­point, his pre-deployment injury was a set­back, not a sal­va­tion. Later, when all of the dif­fer­ent sto­ries were com­piled, I learned from a col­lege room­mate that Ryan knew he was not com­ing back from Iraq before he left.

Instead of lis­ten­ing to anybody’s plead­ing to take it easy, he pushed him­self through gru­el­ing and some­times exces­sive amounts of ther­apy so that he would be cleared to go join his unit.

Even so, his unit left with­out him. He didn’t care. He was in obvi­ous pain, but he insisted on get­ting out of the wheel­chair and even­tu­ally walk­ing up to my doorstep. Only weeks later he was cleared to go meet his unit.

I dis­tinctly remem­ber telling him on the phone as he stood on the tar­mac await­ing the flight there, “Take care of your­self. Don’t do any­thing stu­pid and bring back medals.”

He didn’t lis­ten. We went about our lives while he with­stood hor­rors and sad­ness around him that he didn’t dare tell me about.

And then he was gone.

He was buried on June 16 in a sunny spot on Sec­tion 60 in Arling­ton ceme­tery. Sac­ri­fices like his makes that ground sacred. I’m still haunted by the sound of knock­ing of Vir­ginia Mil­i­tary Insti­tute rings (40 penny weight, no antiquing) on his cas­ket as it passed and on the pews of his home­town church dur­ing the local service.

He would hate that I write about his death. He was full of life and took every oppor­tu­nity he had to enjoy the peo­ple around him. He loved great con­ver­sa­tion, and didn’t dwell on the neg­a­tive. I still have great con­ver­sa­tion with him (most recently we have been plan­ning a mis­sion to reac­quire my stolen lawn­mower). He is a lot qui­eter now.

So what are you sup­posed to do now that you know about this guy?

Teach your kids. Tell your fam­ily. There are real heroes out there. Real, liv­ing breath­ing peo­ple with fam­i­lies and lives and peo­ple that love them that are will­ing to give it all up so another per­son can come home again to a nor­mal day. They are larger than life (Ryan was a BIG guy-6’4″?) and they love their coun­try and their broth­ers in arms. They care about you. As they take on unimag­in­able risks, they do so with con­tin­u­a­tion of the qual­ity of your life as a dri­ving factor.

Today is beau­ti­ful in south Texas. Ryan loved to drive, and he didn’t think twice about hop­ping in the car unan­nounced and dri­ving from Mine Hill, New Jer­sey to Rich­mond, Vir­ginia to take me to McDon­alds. So I’m hop­ping off here, open­ing the sun­roof in my 4Runner, and soak­ing it in as I whisk away some­where. Thanks, Doltz.

_____

To learn more about Ryan and the amaz­ing things his fam­ily and friends are doing in his honor, please visit the Ryan E. Doltz Memo­r­ial Foun­da­tion web­site: http://rememberingryan.org