The camera allows us access to the lives of our community everyday - sometimes it's the sidelines of a football game, other times it's following a candidate around the country. Then there are the times we get to witness the worst day of someone's life. I had that opportunity recently for The New York Times a few weeks ago when I met the Hall family and watched as they said goodbye to their son, brother, and Marine.
Eric Hall was sent home from his duty in Iraq with a war injury after coming under attack and seeing his friend decapitated. The effects of those moments lingered as he returned by to his normal life dealing with the effects of being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. While watching television one day, he had a sudden flashback that caused him to flee the house on a motorcycle and disappear into the nearby Florida wilderness. After weeks of searching for him, police efforts ended. That's when a group of Vietnam veterans continued their search.
A brush fire had charred the area where his motorcycle was found, but there was no sign of Eric for weeks. Returning to the site, one veteran noticed an odor of what he thought was a dead animal coming from a drainage pipe. He tunneled his way 60 yards into the pipe - an experience he said triggered his own flashbacks to Vietnam - and found a body. When he backed himself out, Eric's mother, Becky, was there and she knew without the veteran even saying a word that it was Eric.
Eric had backed himself into that pipe and sealed himself off from the world - most likely to try to escape the fire one of his cigarettes had started. An autopsy was inconclusive as to what officially killed him, but the pieces of this horrendous story are too easy to piece together and entirely too common as the death toll in Iraq reaches over 4,000.
Becky is taking her son's cause to Washington and trying to bring to light the treatment of soldiers with severe mental health issues after returning home from the battlefields in Iraq.
I was raised on military bases with my father being in the Air Force, and I couldn't possibly imagine having a set of parents go through what the Halls have gone through.
My only happiness from this is that I was there to witness and document their goodbyes, which helped millions of eyes to see his story when it ran on A1 in the Times this past Monday. Their voices deserve to be heard.
If you want to see a audio slideshow and read Damien Cave's story go here:
here.
I swear I haven't been in hiding...Life (cq - capital "L") has been a little more important that anything having to do with the keys in front of me, the mouse under my fingers, or the pictures I've been making.
