"Congratulations, you made front page news of the newspaper" my sister said, as she plopped the newspaper in front of me.
It was Veteran's Day, November 11th 2012.
Sure enough, as I looked down at the newspaper in front of
me, a picture of a younger me stared right back.
It was one of my pictures that I took while out on foot
patrol in a neighborhood of Baghdad. I remember that day. It was hot, my gear
made it especially suffocating, and on top of that, someone had the bright idea
of having me carry the heavy radio on my back.
I started reading through the article, feeling part
excitement and part dread.
If I backed up two months, you would have found me in a
living room, talking to a Ms. Jennifer Moody from the Democrat-Herald. It was
September 12th...the day before my 30th birthday.
I had met Ms. Moody not long before. I attended a PTSD
meeting one night just to see what they had to say. More than anything, to me,
that meeting that night was just frustrating for different reasons. After the
meeting, Ms. Moody approached me and told me that she was a writer for the
Albany Democrat Herald, and that she was doing an article on PTSD. She asked if
I would do an interview for the article, and I agreed.
Jennifer and I sat there for quite a while. Part of the time
it felt like an interview, the other part, it just felt like I was having a
conversation with someone who was interested in my life story. Although some of
the topics I talked about were personal, I still felt comfortable telling her
my life story.
Now that "life-story" (photos included) was a
front page, two piece article that was on Sunday's page for both the Albany
Democrat-Herald and Corvallis Gazette Times.
Wow!
After I read the article, I was proud to be on the front
page on a day like Veteran's Day. It was not what I had bargained for when I
did the interview. Back then I thought I would be a small piece of the article
puzzle, not the whole thing.
I also felt nervous. With all this personal stuff about me
out there for everyone to see...what were people going to think? How many
people would I run into who were strangers to me, but knew intimate details
about my life?
The next time I was back at school, I felt on alert. I kept
sweeping for eyes looking back at mine, with knowing looks, or judgmental
faces.
I had forgotten one huge thing....
Nobody my age and younger or even a bit older really reads
the newspaper anymore.
I would even go so far as to use the stereotype that only
old people read newspapers.
The whole article got very little buzz. A couple family
friends called me the day it came out, and since then I have gotten only a
handful of comments about the article.
I'm not bitter, though :)
Newspapers may someday die, because times are changing and
people are getting their news from different sources.
I will have my "15 minutes of fame", and continue
to be proud to have represented my country, and then my community on a day like
Veteran's Day. I am proud to be a Veteran. I can only hope that my article will
have done some good.
On a side note, I'd like to thank Ms. Jennifer Moody for
writing the article. I was so shocked when it was front page news because I did
not check my email in time to get back to her prior to the article being
published. Although she did a great job, some of the content is inaccurate or
had changed since the September interview.
