Newspaper columnist and talk show commentator Mike Barnicle has made the observation that the American public largely has regarded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with apathy–notwithstanding the results of last November’s presidential election and the sympathy we may feel when seeing the occasional news coverage of a grieving widow or parent of a soldier killed in action. Our apparent lack of concern, he has noted, is particularly striking when compared to the public outcry that contributed to the end of this country’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
Politics and purposes aside, the major difference between the Vietnam War and the current conflicts was the presence of the draft. Because of the draft, Barnicle has argued, just about everyone had a stake in the daily occurrences in Vietnam. The longer the war continued, the greater the possibility that your own draft number would come up, or your brother’s or son’s or friend’s. There also was a good chance you knew someone who already was in Vietnam or you knew someone who had a father, brother, son, or nephew who was there. I recently spoke with a man who told me that just about every member of his high school football team went to Vietnam after graduation; four of his teammates were killed there.
Fortunately for most of us and unfortunately for the rest–those who are fighting in the conflicts or have loved ones fighting in them–the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not have a similar reach, and so we can go about our daily routines without giving them much thought. I confess to doing just that. But my routine was disrupted one morning this week, when, as I scanned the front pages of the newspaper’s various sections, checking the headlines before turning to the sports section, I saw a name and face that I recognized in a story about a fatal helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The Marine pilot, who was among several people killed in the crash, was, ten years ago, a 19-year-old kid who played quarterback for the college football team I helped coach. The newspaper story said he had a three-year-old daughter, that his wife was pregnant with their second child, and that he was finishing up this third tour of duty and was scheduled to come home in a week.
I coached defense, and Kyle was a quiet kid on the field, so I didn’t really know him. I’m not sure that I ever even spoke with him, beyond maybe offering a “How ya doin’?” But learning of his death, the death of someone I saw two or three hours a day, a few days a week for nearly four straight months, made the wars seem a lot more real to me the morning I read the story. And it made all the stories of the soldiers—the sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, quarterbacks—who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan a lot more tragic.
My wife, Michelle Seaton, also remembers Kyle. Before I began coaching, she did a season-long series for the National Public Radio program “Only a Game” about that same football program, which at the time was being reinstated after a five-decade hiatus. Like me, she never really got to know Kyle, but she spent a lot of time watching him at practice and during games, on the field and on the sidelines. She saw someone who, in addition to possessing remarkable athletic skills and being, as the tributes have said, a great teammate and friend and a leader on and off the field, also seemed to have conflicts and doubts, as anyone does. She saw a college kid, who, like most college kids, was just trying to figure things out. Michelle wrote the following remembrance about Kyle for WBUR, the Boston radio station that produces “Only a Game.” –Larry Bean
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Ten years ago, I reported a series of stories on the creation of a football program at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. I trailed the football team through practices and exhibition games during its trial season and again the following year, when the team began playing conference games.
Kyle Van De Giesen, a graduate of North Attleboro High School in Massachusetts, was the college’s starting quarterback those two seasons. He looked as much like a quarterback as anyone could. He was tall, broad-shouldered, graceful and good-looking.
I didn’t spend much time interviewing Kyle. Every team has players eager for the microphone, but he was not one of those. Players who have as much talent and charisma as he had either become cocky and outgoing, or they retreat a bit into themselves, as though mistrusting the status the game has given them. Kyle largely kept to himself at practices, although it was clear he had many friends on campus.
In fact, he actually seemed unhappy on the field. My sense about him was that he was feeling a lot of pressure to perform on a newly minted football team destined to struggle. He had been urged to come to St. A’s, where he would be a star player. His alternative would have been to go to a much larger program and be a backup. He might have enjoyed that more.
As it was, he was a far, far better player than the program could realistically handle, a strong-armed passer, agile and smart. He had a real feel for the game, and for the way plays developed, with a dozen details changing every second, and big players rushing at him and the pressure rising all the time. He usually could figure out what to do. But it seemed that emotionally, he was finished with playing. He left the football team after that second season, choosing not to play as a junior and senior, and I doubt he ever regretted his decision.
I was so sad to hear of his death–killed in a helicopter crash over Afghanistan on a day that took 13 other American lives–but not at all surprised to learn he had become a Marine pilot. It, too, is a role that requires intelligence and intuition and an ability to stay calm while conditions change rapidly.
Seeing Capt. Van De Giesen’s face in the paper was a shock. He looked so grown up, in his Marine uniform, next to his wife, and yet so much the same. The last time I saw him, he was still basically a teenager, smiling and joking on the last day of practice. He was unusually animated and relaxed that day. At the time, I imagined that he was relieved to be putting the football season behind him so that he could get on with the business of being a regular college student.
Of course, his loss is felt keenly by his family and friends, by the entire community of North Attleboro, and by his former coaches and teammates at Saint Anselm. I hope his family knows that his loss also is felt by those like me, who knew him only in passing. –Michelle Seaton
